Thanks much! We were pretty tired of having to take the dogs out on leashes. It's only been a problem once before when a mountain lion was hanging out near the house. The dogs were completely happy staying in then!

I got the impression that this bear had just set out on his own. He was young and small but not a baby.

We have coyotes too, in fact we had a young male hanging around the place last winter and all summer. He seems to have taken off now. We're pretty certain that before he left he got the cat. Nome, the cat, was hard to convince to come in the house at night and he had started skipping supper so he wouldn't get locked in. I saw him at dusk but never again after that. We were pretty upset. We've never had problems with aggression against us or the dogs though.