A few months ago, Texas resident Chelsea Keeland went out of town for a few days to visit her sister. While she was gone, she got an urgent message from her neighbor about an unexpected visitor he’d spotted in her yard.
“[H]e was like, ‘Hey, I think there’s some sort of animal in your backyard,’” Keeland said in a video for The Dodo.
Chelsea Keeland
According to Keeland’s neighbor, the little animal had been howling outside her house for days on end. Footage from Keeland’s security camera revealed that the animal was some kind of small canine, but the videos were too blurry for her to identify the exact species.
As soon as Keeland got home from her trip, she ran straight to her backyard to see what was going on. As she finally got a closer look at the animal, she began to wonder whether he was a baby coyote. She looked up what coyote pups look like and was floored by the resemblance.
Chelsea Keeland
Regardless of the animal’s species, Keeland knew she had to help — he’d been alone for days and was clearly hungry and terrified. She and her sister wrapped up the scared pup in a blanket and brought him inside.
“A storm was rolling in,” Keeland said. “So it was like the clock was ticking.”
While the baby seemed a bit nervous, Keeland and her sister could tell that he was grateful to be warm and cozy. As the night went on, he slowly started to let his guard down.
Chelsea Keeland
The next day, Keeland took the animal to the vet, who determined he wasn’t a coyote — he was a dog. Keeland was surprised to learn he wasn’t a wild animal, but relieved that she could now do normal dog things with him. As an homage to his coyote-like appearance, Keeland decided to name the pup Yote.
Keeland put up posters of Yote all over her neighborhood, but no one came to claim him. It quickly became clear that Yote needed someone to adopt him.
As adorable as Yote was, Keeland and her husband, Steven, weren’t sure if they would be able to keep him forever. Their beloved dog, Leroy, had recently passed away, and they didn’t know if they were ready for another pup. But as the days went by, Yote started to feel like a member of the family.
“I slowly just got more and more attached,” Steven said in a video for The Dodo.
After just a few weeks with Yote, the couple made the decision to permanently adopt him. They noticed that he had similar mannerisms to Leroy and started getting the feeling that Leroy had sent Yote to them.
“[I]t was almost like the universe saying, like, ‘You do need another dog in your life and you do have room in your heart to love another dog,’” Keeland said.
Over the past few months, Yote has been enjoying settling into his forever home. Given everything Yote went through as a puppy, Keeland has been pampering him. With the holiday season in full swing, Yote has been spending his days cuddled up by the Christmas tree and enjoying eating lots of special treats.
