Posted on 01/13/2024 2:47:35 PM PST by nickcarraway
Don’t tell Roger Shuman lightning doesn't strike in the same place twice.
Shuman, who lost his 12-year-old Chihuahua, Ginger, to a coyote Aug. 3, lost another dog to the same coyote in December. Both attacks happened in the backyard of his Quail Creek home.
Betsy, an 8-year-old Chihuahua mix, died at a veterinary hospital a couple of days after the Dec. 10 attack.
“He got her by the throat, beat her on the ground and kept shaking her,” Shuman said of the coyote, which he described as “20 to 30 percent larger than a typical coyote.”
“When I got to her, there was no sign of life… I couldn’t see her chest rising or falling. I assumed she was dead."
When he saw Betsy twitch, he knew she was still alive and took her to an vet emergency facility. The dog appeared to be getting better but then began having difficulty breathing despite two days in an oxygen tent.
“They told me she was never going to be the same,” he said. “That made it easier to pull the plug.”
Shuman only saw the coyote from a distance but a neighbor confirmed it was likely the same oversized animal from August, which has often been seen in the neighborhood.
Shuman said he had changed how long and when he’d allow his two other dogs to be in the backyard after Ginger died in August. He closed the doggie door before sunset and didn’t open it until about an hour after sunrise. For several months, there were no problems, he said, noting his property doesn’t back up to a golf course, wilderness area or arroyo.
“I thought that was a freak thing,” he said of the August attack. “I didn’t see the coyotes roaming the streets like before.”
It’s only anecdotal, but based on conversations with other residents and what he sees on the golf course, Shuman says there are 50 coyotes roaming Quail Creek at any given time. He blames it in part on a recent proliferation of rabbits.
“They’re not afraid of people. They’re getting bolder, they really are," he said, noting it's not uncommon to see coyotes in the middle of the day in Quail Creek. "Each time they go out, they expand their hours and expand their territories.”
“I never felt threatened until this year,” he added.
Betsy and Ginger aren’t the only losses Shuman has experienced in Quail Creek. In March 2020, he lost a Chiweenie dog after it was startled by an approaching golf cart and jumped into the golf cart lane and was struck.
Shuman recently adopted a Dachshund-Chihuahua mix from Arizona Small Dog Rescue in Phoenix. Bert is a puppy and still not house trained so spends time in the backyard. Shuman isn’t comfortable with it, but he said there's no getting around it.
As for his other dog, Buddy, a Chihuahua-Rhodesian Ridgeback, “He can handle himself,” Shuman said. “I think the coyote would not take him on, he’d think he met his equal.”
The guy was a f’ing idiot for letting the dogs outside. End of story.
There are some very nice and powerful air rifles these days. So far as I know, anyone can buy them. Unless a neighbor witnesses the shot no one would know any different.
There's the problem right there.
Here in Michigan, we use chihuahuas for bait when fishing for muskies......
I knew a farmer out in rural N.W. Kansas who hunted coyotes with greyhounds. He had one greyhound/wolfhound mix that was massive.
...Mini 14...
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