The closer you get to Canada, the more things'll eat your horse.

And you. And the dog.

Even though I live 650 miles from the Canadian border, this quote from Thomas King feels like truth. I don’t have a horse, but I do think about getting eaten on a fairly regular basis.

I started taking our first dog, Emma, on early morning walks to avoid people and dogs. It wasn’t that she was aggressive, it was that she was too friendly. She would tear off down the path towards joggers, mountain bikers, and dog walkers, determined to say hi whether they liked it or not. Recall didn’t work. Leashes didn’t work. Everyone was grumpy and frustrated.

Hiking at 6 or 7 am was a revelation. I didn’t need to be hypervigilant. I could actually enjoy the path and the scenery without nervously clutching a dog biscuit and scanning the horizon. And Emma could get her energy out in a long, loping, sniffing walk without restraint.

Eventually Emma’s recall got much better, but we kept doing early morning walks because I fell in love with it. The forest was peaceful, dark and silent when we got started, slowly transitioning to rays of golden light as the sun broke through the fog. No bros on mountain bikes roaring down the path. No packs of loudly gossiping runners. Just a very social dog and her antisocial human.

Sometimes Emma balked and refused to go down the path. This usually happened in one particular spot, a more open section where the path was covered in rocky gravel and lined by manzanita trees. She would freeze in place, staring straight ahead and refuse to move. I would cheerfully stride onward, calling her name, shaking my head at my stubborn dog. Emma would wait as long as possible and then run to catch up with me, immediately stopping again and giving me a look.

“Coyotes,” I thought. Emma famously hates coyotes, but I figured that between the two of us, we could easily take them on. I continued on at a steady clip, enjoying the smell of the early morning air and the sound of chirping birds.

Recently my friend informed me that mountain lions chirp. She was hiking with her border collie and was warned by another hiker that there was a young male mountain lion in the vicinity based on the loud chirping noises. My friend, a no-nonsense Mainer, picked up a big stick and continued on, dog at her side.

“Crap,” I thought, thinking back to all those times that Emma was desperately trying to tell me something. I googled mountain lions in Santa Cruz and discovered a recent and alarming uptick in sightings. A local news outlet included a video of a mountain lion loping off with a house cat dangling in its jaws. Attacks on humans are rare, but not unheard of and almost certainly fatal. They seem to be more likely to happen to short, solitary females in the early morning. From behind. The articles included pictures where attacks had taken place. Those pictures looked exactly like our hiking trail.

For a few mornings I dragged my reluctant husband along for strength in numbers, and, if we are being brutally honest, to serve as a distraction while Emma and I escaped. But everyone was miserable. So I went back to my solitary dog hikes. Every now and then I whirl around to scan the trail behind me, as if I could catch a mountain lion mid leap. I also have taken to singing Lucinda Williams songs, very loudly and off key, with the hope that the big cats will look for easier, less deranged prey.

Now we have a snack sized puppy. It makes me even more nervous as I watch the puppy frolic down the path like a chubby chicken nugget. The risk equation feels like it has tilted slightly more towards the dangerous side of things.

I am still conflicted about whether I am doing something incredibly stupid or just living life to the fullest. I take slight consolation in the fact that, were a mountain lion to attack, the dogs would be ok. They would both run for it, leaving me to my fate.