A few times in the past, I've mentioned the idea of giving Sheriff Florence Coyatawne a badger deputy, so I finally got around to designing him, or at least his pudgy face. It definitely helps that in real life, badgers and coyotes sometimes cooperate when hunting.
Of course, I image the rest of the deputy to be just as round and pudgy as one would expect based on this portrait, my general taste in character design, and the fact that he's a badger.

"Greyson" is just one of my stock surnames for badgers, as a few of my other badger characters have the surname Greyson as well even if they may not be directly related to the deputy, sort of how I tend to use Duncan for donkeys, Donner for deer, and Reynard and Todd for foxes. He does bear a slight resemblance to a one-off teacher badger I drew once, though.

I figure the sheriff and the deputy have a fairly typical cartoon cop dynamic, with Deputy Greyson being the more reserved (and nervous) one while Florence is more outgoing and assertive. Being small-town cops in a pretty quiet desert town, they don't really have a lot to do or see much action, and are more likely to be found "patrolling" around the diner or the convenience store than actually doing anything truly productive, with Sheriff Coyatawne's gruff, assertive and outgoing act having him lead off with an intimidation act before his more dopey and playful nature kicks in and he just starts chuckling and letting just about everyone they pull over off with a warning to keep it within 10 of the speed limit or get that tail light fixed--but on the off chance they actually do bother to write a ticket or make any sort of actual arrest, it's usually Deputy Greyson that finds himself having to do the work that requires more than one brain cell.

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I also really like the idea of the deputy and the sheriff being a couple, with it not really being a secret, but not really official or openly acknowledged, either. The two are known to spend an awful lot of time together both on and off duty, and while I once joked once about Sheriff Coyatawne making his deputy take his pin-up underwear pics, that may actually be canon.

The couple dynamic I imagine for them would definitely be more comedic in nature, as I imagine the sheriff and deputy sharing a milkshake with two straws at the diner like in old cartoons being something they would definitely do, with Sheriff shooting flirtatious glances at his deputy while the deputy is looking sorta awkward, wondering why they could only afford one milkshake and conveniently had to share.

Whether it's Deputy Greyson's somewhat shy and nervous nature making him embarrassed to engage in public displays of affection, concerns about how unprofessional it might be for Coyote Canyon's two law enforcement officers to be playfully flirting in public while on duty, a general discomfort with romantic stuff, or he's actually just sorta unaware of the sheriff's advances (or even the fact that they are effectively a couple) somehow, I have yet to decide--I find myself liking the romantic dynamic of one party being fairly forward about their intentions while the other is somehow seemingly ignorant quite a bit as time goes on.
The idea that Deputy Greyson might be the only one in town that doesn't know he and the sheriff are actually a couple, that somehow he's just never connected the dots, never really given much thought to how often Sheriff Coyatawne "accidentally" answered the door in only his underwear when Deputy Greyson comes over to visit, or noticed how the clumsy coyote often "accidentally" drops things and has to bend over to pick them up, and doesn't pick up on the true intent of the one-armed hugs from the sheriff, is actually quite amusing to me.

Of course, Deputy Greyson has never expressed any real discomfort or disinterest about any of this, and it's entirely possible that his dopey obliviousness is in itself an act because he likes the flirtatious behavior and wants it to continue.

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