Customer Reviews

God's Dog: The North American Coyote

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This is an excellent book. Hope Ryden spent years in Yellowstone and other places watching and learning about coyotes first-hand. The book reflects this, full of the charm, interest, and conflicts of watching coyotes and getting involved in their world- which inevitably means getting involved in the human world, and its mixed emotions towards these canines, as well.

I read this book for the first time back in 1994 when I was working on an educational program about Coyotes. I felt like I had roamed with the Coyotes after reading it. For years I have been looking for this book, wondering if it was still in print. I'm anxious to read it again.

The writings are scant on the coyote but this book answers many questions. First hand observations,natural history, the past history of man vs. coyote and photographs. There are many wonderful aspects to this book but what is most compelling is the way Hope Ryden shows the coyote as a resourceful, affectionate and intelligent creature rather than its familiar portrayal as a pest and killer. Much more than a field study this book is written from the heart.

I thoroughly enjoyed reading this book for several reasons:
I like Hope Ryden's writing style. She flows very easily and the book just "reads well". Additionally, it's easy to see that she loves and appreciates this beatiful wild creature for what it is - a part of creation, like all other animals, that needs to be allowed to take its proper place in the grand scheme of things.
Lastly, I think that she makes an excellent point concerning the coincidence of coyotes and the grazing of public lands. Western ranchers do have the right to make as much money as they can, for that matter everybody has that same right, but it is ugly and disgusting to see people in our supposedly liberal -minded society to have such blind hatred for a natural predator that does what it does simply to survive.
The point in her story that saddens and disgusts me the most is that money is so, so important to my fellow -countrymen that they will stop at nothing, including killing and exterminating, just for a better income. I only hope that one day these same people will take a more comprehensive look at the world and see how beautiful and wondrous and perfect it already is. Coyotes and all.

The writings are scant on the coyote but this book answers many questions. First hand observations,natural history, the past history of man vs. coyote and photographs. There are many wonderful aspects to this book but what is most compelling is the way Hope Ryden shows the coyote as a resourceful, affectionate and intelligent creature rather than its familiar portrayal as a pest and killer. Much more than a field study this book is written from the heart.

Hope Ryden is a beautiful writer and she describes her adventures in observing America's most intelligent animal, the coyote, in a way that makes this book hard to put down. The coyote has been unjustly maligned and Hope Ryden uses scientific methods and a writer's skills to tell us why. It is heart-breaking to note that our government (both federal and state) continues a cruel, unethical program to try to exterminate this much-needed predator in the ecosytem. Ryden describes near the end of this book how 500,000 of God's dogs are poisoned, trapped and shot annually and we pay for it through our tax dollars.
I'd also highly recommend The Daily Coyote The Daily Coyote: A Story of Love, Survival, and Trust in the Wilds of Wyoming, Barbara Kingsolver's fictional masterpiece based on science, Prodigal Summer Prodigal Summer: A Novel and Eastern Coyote Eastern Coyote.

I used to think of coyotes as being from the wide open spaces of the West. But then my family moved to upstate New York. Our house is located in a semirural area and we still hear the coyotes almost nightly. I've never actually seen one up close - they seem to keep to the woods - but their howling is one of the eeriest sounds I've ever heard. First you hear a frenzied yipping, like a horde of mad pipers, and then they start their oooOOOOOOOOOoooing. I could write a Gothic novel with unseen coyotes as a particularly ominous aspect of melancholy atmosphere.

Few people are certainly more dedicated to coyotes, however, than Hope Ryden. She spent two years camping, often under difficult conditions, in isolated backwater areas of Montana and Wyoming, watching her coyotes for hours while trying not to alert them of her presence (not an easy thing to accomplish - they have excellent smell and hearing). At one point, her life became endangered when she got lost in deep snow. But most impressive is that she was actually able to keep of track specific individuals over the course of months. How she was able to recognize them after being away for weeks is beyond me, but the insights she gained as a result are well worth the effort and will doubtlessly transform any reader into a coyote lover as their eyes are opened to their hidden world. Coyotes are, after all, notoriously secretive, a trait that has undeniably contributed to both their plentiful numbers and incredible adaptability. The puppy chapter is as adorable as expected (Dad is at one point described as "long-suffering"), although the parents' poor treatment of the "nanny" is rather sad. They also seem to have the astonishing ability to produce a mouse on demand for their babies to play with.

Although Ryden's focus was wild populations, a brief section that focused on "pet" coyotes is also highly informative. There was the female, for example, who took a black Lab as her mate for life and had a little black puppy by him. Ryden's skills as a writer, as well as her obvious admiration for the animal, are at their best when she relates the story of beautiful Amber, whose mute sorrow tells of her betrayal by the humans who were meant to care for her. Charlie fans will certainly enjoy being able to compare Shreve Stockton's experiences, as outlined in both her blog The Daily Coyote and recent memoir of the same name.

It was actually Shreve and Charlie who first got me interested in these wonderful canines, but it is Ryden's "God's Dog" that contains all the requisite "technical" information that puts Charlie in greater context. Although the book was published in 1989, the field research was done in the mid-70's, which is reflected at times in Ryden's prose, particularly when she launches on a sort of hippie-esque rant about how the white man destroyed everything. But then again, her reports on the cruelty of "pest control" programs, as well as individual humans, may well prove her point. The bit about using guard dogs to watch sheep sounded very promising (instead of killing coyotes, they will often enact canine dominance rituals) and I wonder how widespread that has become since then. They should really come out with an updated edition, especially since the coyote's habitat has now expanded to all of North and Central America. Today, a book like this is more vital than ever.

Also: DEFINTELY read Stockton's "The Daily Coyote."

I don't think we would fare well. Reading animal research is often tedious but this book is an engaging read as well as being informative. The common knowledge about coyotes held by many people is that they are pests to be squashed like a bothersome bug, yet the same people treat their pet dogs as members of the family. If you are a reader who wonders if the rumors about this animal are true and you want answers, this book is a very good place to start because you will read the whole thing (it is very entertaining) and you will be able to use the observations made about the animal to make your own decisions about coyotes.

Hope Ryden doesn't flat out assert that the coyote is the smartest wild animal in North America, but she certainly presents plenty of evidence from which one could argue the point. GOD'S DOG (the title is the sobriquet Indians of the American Southwest bestowed on the coyote) is a fascinating book on a fascinating animal.

GOD'S DOG was originally published in the 1970's, and this second edition dates to 1989. The centerpiece of the book is based on two years of fieldwork that Ryden conducted in 1972 and 1973, observing (from as close as possible) packs of coyotes on the National Elk Refuge in western Wyoming, near Jackson Hole. She spent weeks watching an extended family of coyotes raise two different litters of coyote pups, and the reader is the beneficiary - both of Ryden's narrative (which is lively and well-paced, not simply the dry details of a naturalist's field notes) and of her remarkable black-and-white photographs.

The book contains many anecdotes of coyote behavior, both of coyotes in the wild and of coyotes who live with people almost as pets - including one that slept with its keepers on the foot of their bed. There also is an extended discussion of the campaign, spearheaded by Western sheepmen, to eradicate the coyote from the wild through widespread trapping and poisoning. That aspect of the book is now somewhat dated. In general, it was reassuring to me to see how much the general public's knowledge of wildlife conservation has progressed in the 35 years since the book was written - though, to be sure, there still is a way to go.

I will pass along two points of coyote behavior from the book: One is that coyotes are basically monogamous, at least within a season. (Of the two packs which Ryden observed closely, the actual father and mother were the same over the two years, assisted by an evolving cast of adult assistants, acting much like aunts and uncles.) Indeed, there is much evidence of coyotes exercising considerable choice as to mates, rejecting potential counterparts they, apparently, don't like. The second point is that coyotes have an inborn response-impulse to stomp on and extinguish small fires they encounter on the ground - a trait that is of obvious survival value for inhabitants of the prairie.

Around our house there are numerous coyotes. We hear a wide range (often eerie) of vocalizations at all times during the evening, night, and early morning. We see them frequently. On two memorable occasions I watched them seemingly taunting our dogs by serenely sitting outside the chicken wire and calmly looking at the fenced-in dogs barking themselves hoarse and silly. So I probably have more personal reasons than many to be interested in this book, but I suspect that anyone with an interest in the natural world will also find much of it to be fascinating.

It's a quick read, and hard to put down. Since I read it at breakfast, I linger through my corn flakes, so I can stall through "just one more page" before I must take off for work!

My dogs and I walk every evening, and on rare occasion, chance upon one come across from the nearby forest preserve. We walk respectfully past each other - he, on a straight path toward destination unknown, we, on meandering path enjoying it all.
I do pick up fast food discard as much as I can to discourage God's dog from coming into our neighborhood to search out easy meals - few neighbors appreciate him as much as I may.

Thank you Hope Ryden for penning your insights.