Jesse,
We will be ready to do that, if we still have her, when she begins to display dangerous behaviors. She doesn't have to kill to survive here and she is being raised by a terrier and us. At this point she is just over 3 months old.
I'm sure you know more about coyotes than I do, but your experience seems to be only related to hunting them in the wild. You see them in a situation where they have to kill for a living and they are afraid of you. This may be different.
I'm looking for the differences between hardwired behaviors and intelligence driven behaviors. Since she was raised from about three days old by us, she has had no training from other coyotes. Some definite differences between her and wild coyotes are that she knows us, has formed habits around living with us, wants to play games with us, clearly sees us as her pack, bonded with my wife at a few days old and trusts us.
So we'll see, and I'll report back with my findings, but at this point, I'm not willing to classify her as a killing machine who is after our pets.
We have also been told by several experts that letting her go in the wild is a death sentence unless she can hunt. That strange coyotes are likely to be killed by other ones and that females don't leave the pack until about eight months old. She will be a stranger with no pack and unable to breed until about a year old, at least. She is also not savvy about the ways of the wild and has less fear of humans than other coyotes. If she saw a human and was hungry, she would likely approach and be misunderstood as sick. That would lead to getting shot.
I know there are some risks involved. But I also know coyotes are reviled for reasons that are not necessarily fair or right. Government programs designed to reduce their numbers have had the opposite effect. Too many people are looking for something to shoot at and will use them for target practice. These same folks might have domestic dogs living in their homes. As I asked in a previous post, what are the differences between domestic and wild dogs? Each can display the other's behavior and they both understand each other completely. They are both dogs from the canis family. How could you care about one and not the other, or at least be a bit curious?
Don't mistake my comments about hunting them as a gun rant of some kind, it's not. I have guns and like to shoot. I just don't shoot animals for fun. I also understand completely why farmers and others would shoot them to protect livestock.
It might be nice if it was really as simple as you say and recommend, but it's not. Once we brought her home, nearly frozen and abandoned, we decided to help her and give her a chance. We realized it would be an interesting opportunity for us as well. We have learned a tremendous amount from her and have grown to love her as anyone might with a domestic dog. She is very interesting and fun to have around, and also difficult at times. There is a lot more to her than I imagined. She is truly an intelligent being with a ton of personality.
