Coyote pack rips into dog, owner on Milton/Quincy line

... the owner was able to fend them off.
I hope the dog adapts to walking on three legs.

Seeking to eat?

They are far more dangerous than coyotes.

Rats, mice, possums, raccoons, squirrels and rabbits that coyotes eat?

Or the two legged kind that can't seem to stop mindlessly throwing their garbage around and creating coyote food supplies on our habitats?

If that's true, I guess the annual Blue Hills hunting should be stopped to keep the food supply of deer up?

This seems like a real outlier event and shouldn't trigger any policy changes in terms of regional wildlife management.

Don't grow emotionally attached to dogs. The coyotes acted like coyotes.

Let's discuss proposals to halt tides and end winter while we're at it.

Getting a series of shots for rabies is not fun.

Have seen two and three together in Jamaica Plain over the years--I have not seen four, but haven't hung around long enough to see if there was more to the pack. Saw two in the back yard last year.

I hear them in the Spring and Summer howling and barking and it sounds to me like more than one coyote.

Up on Fairmount Hill in HP, several neighbors refer to Summit Street as Coyote Alley. I've seen moms hunting with two or more of her offspring, but usually more like March than now.

I'm surprised by the attack too. Normally our coyotes like to pick up a rabbit or cat or such, something small enough to carry home to the den. I had to wonder whether Matilda was brave and tried to intimidate toe coyotes to protect her and her human chum..

The "Eastern Coyote" is a Western Coyote hybridized with dogs and wolves. Larger, and they do form packs, instead of being solely solitary.

Heckin' cute, too, but as another result of that hybridization they are more likely to come into conflict with humans and their pets.

Stories like this one I mostly chalk up to being the price we pay for being even slightly close to nature. Yeah, if there are some problem individuals, we can transport or kill those, but you can't avoid all such encounters.

I've seen mostly solitaries over the years, but in the last ten years there have been occasional AWOOO festivals nearby of a full moon. Like last night. Very eerie sounds - definitely not something you would expect to hear in an inner suburban neighborhood!

Then came the large increase in the number of deer.

Then they started organizing to take down the deer.

I suspect that coyotes were sufficiently successful at taking deer to have a population rise ... and now there seem to be fewer deer, so they are using their teamwork skillz for other prey that is too large to snack alone. I also have to wonder if the extreme early winter weather has something to do with their shift in venue.

My neighbor is a big coyote booster. He's also kind of casual about letting his Jack Russell Terrierist loose without a leash to run off into the woods. Two weeks ago he warned people that the Coyotes got one of their pack to lure the dumb dog into chasing it, and that two others were closing in when he went out blowing an air horn to run them all off. The terrierist doesn't like the leash, but, hey, lesson learned for the human.

From 2013: