Fergie wearing new snow jacket during this morning's desert hike, Albuquerque, New Mexico, before sunrise. She's part toy Italian greyhound and very delicate..if I don't put a coat and shoes on her, she shivers and limps. Good thing she loves it, though.

The pretty new coat nearly cost Fergie her life when a juvenile male Cooper's hawk failed to recognize her as my dog.

I was hiking in the desert strip early this morning and when the sun started coming up, I decided to take a photo of Fergie wearing her new coat. It was so early, I hadn't seen the juvenile male Cooper's hawk out hunting yet.

I told her to "sit," and "stay," then I stepped backward five feet to fit Fergie in the photo. Some rocks were in my way, so I turned to see where to step.

When I turned back around, a huge juvenile male Cooper hawk was coming straight at Fergie, claws out, for the final strike.
But almost at once, the attacking hawk was hit from the side by another juvenile male Cooper's hawk, no doubt the one Fergie and I usually hung with while he was learning to hunt.

The two juvenile males used to hunt together some mornings, but this one apparently hadn't met Fergie before, or if he had, he didn't recognize her as a dog, in that coat.

Suddenly two huge hawks were fighting in the air only a few feet above Fergie, who was still obediently sitting there waiting for me.
I didn't know what to do, but in a flash the rescuer hawk knocked the other hawk into the wall, and the attacker hawk slipped over the wall and flew off.

The action was too close and the subjects too large for my Canon 300mm lens, as I'd already found out when I tried to photograph the white-winged dove circling my head to escape that same juvenile male Cooper's hawk last month.

Anyway, I'm SOOO grateful to still have my little toy greyhound.
From now on, she stays glued to my side when we're in the desert.

Last night, when I went outside at sunset to walk Fergie, I walked to the end of the cul-de-sac to start down the steep concrete water channel, just as a male juvenile coyote timidly stuck its head out from the lane.

He acted nervous because the neighbors were unloading a car a few yards away in a lighted drive-way but the coyote soon decided that it was safe, and trotted past them -nobody saw him- and up the street.

He stopped a few times and looked back, which is coyote language for "hurry up!"
I did try to keep up, despite a sore abdomen (I'm recovering from cancer), but we kept falling behind until the coyote crossed Irving Street and went on up the street into the next division, and we turned back.

But since coyotes can jump 13-foot walls (I've photographed them doing it), and can run 42 mph, I don't blame myself..much.

Still it's kind of how I felt when the Chihuahua raven family kept calling me to come along when they flew over my house...I always feel wimpy compared to my wild critter friends.