Coyote Chaos on the Run

In partnership with

Happy Friday, everyone! It was a busy week in the Urban Musher household!

But before we get into it, this week’s newsletter is brought to you by:

All your news. None of the bias.

Be the smartest person in the room by reading 1440! Dive into 1440, where 3.5 million readers find their daily, fact-based news fix. We navigate through 100+ sources to deliver a comprehensive roundup from every corner of the internet – politics, global events, business, and culture, all in a quick, 5-minute newsletter. It's completely free and devoid of bias or political influence, ensuring you get the facts straight.

Subscribe to 1440 today.

Last weekend, it was FINALLY cool enough to start running the dogs! Saturday morning, we got up early while it was in the upper 40sF and put Pence in harness for the first time this season. She was vibrating with excitement (and maybe a little nerves since she was on her own?).

Riley took Pence on a one mile run on his bike. A nice, short run since it’s been several months since she’s done it. Each fall, the dogs are a bit rusty when it comes to pulling and commands, especially when they’re by themselves. Or maybe it’s selective hearing, who knows.

This year was no exception for Pence. When they took off on their run, Pence was trotting just ahead of the bike, but not pulling. She was looking around in every direction, listening to all the noises in the neighborhood.

She eventually started running and pulling, and gained more confidence. When she rounded the halfway mark, she sprinted back toward home. When the run was over, she was a happy little sleddoggo!

Just a few hours later, I met Beth to get Boo back. When we pulled in the neighborhood, he started screaming and knew where he was. I let him out of the car and he ran up to the garage door, whining, wanting in. When I opened the door, he immediately went to find Pence!

They were excited to see each other and went to the backyard to do some zoomies. They eventually settled down and took a nap together on the couch.

Saturday night, it was around 50F and I was able to run the dogs on the scooter together! This was Boo’s first run of the season, but he did fantastic! He was pulling, listening to commands, everything! Pence seemed more confident having Boo next to her.

We ran 1 mile and average 9.61mph. We had to stop for traffic a couple times, so it brought our average down. On the straightaways, we hit 18mph three times! I use the Runkeeper app to track our runs.

Sunday morning, it was in the mid 40sF and Riley ran both dogs on the bike. They ran one mile again.

Sunday night’s run is where things got interesting! I ran the dogs on the scooter again. Our neighborhood route has a half mile loop that we can do multiple times to increase our distances if we want.

The second time around the loop, a COYOTE ran across the street about 100 feet in front of us! It was dark. The dogs both had flashing vests on, I had a headlight on the scooter, and I had a headlamp on.

I saw the coyote trot through the headlamp light up ahead. I could tell what it was by the way it trotted. At first, I didn’t think the dogs saw it. I immediately started slowing the dogs down. But it caught their eyes.

I thought I was about to be drug between houses in the dark. Luckily, we have two good doggos and they stopped for me! They were at a walking pace when we came up on the path where the coyote crossed the street. The scent stopped them in their tracks. Both dogs were definitely on edge and their prey drive started to kick in.

They also knew this wasn’t a normal house dog. They wouldn’t care about a regular dog. In fact, they would probably run the opposite direction from a regular dog. But this time, they were sniffing hard on the scent trail and trying to pull into the grass.

I finally got them back on the road and we continued our run. But as I mentioned earlier, we were on a loop. I was afraid that when we rounded the corner on the other side of the loop that we would come face to face with the coyote. Luckily, there was no sign of it.

However, I knew the dogs would be distracted if we did another loop and I was still worried the coyote was in the area, so I decided to cut the run short that night and head back home.

We ended up doing just 0.75 miles that night. Our average speed dropped to 9.14mph due to our stop for the coyote. We did near 17mph on the straight aways a couple times. I’m sure if we were on grassy/dirt trails our speeds would be a little slower with more ground friction, but it gives us a good comparison between runs if we are improving or not.

So we were able to do four short runs while the temperatures were cooler. In past years, sometimes we were not even able to run four times before our first dryland race weekend, so I’m thrilled with that. Temperatures are back up to around 90F so we’ve transitioned back to regular walks when the temperatures cool off in the evenings.

Unfortunately, it doesn’t look like we’ll be able to get any more training runs in over the next 7-10 days at least. But when we are able to run again, we plan to take the dogs to the local mountain bike trails to do some off-road training. I think they enjoy that more, and they’re definitely less distracted.

We are so close to being able to pull the trigger on a new mountain bike for the fall season! We are over half way to our goal!

To those who do throw us some spare change, you are amazing and we can't thank you enough!

Catch you back here next week!

-Hannah, Riley, Boo, and Pence