Coyotes kill three small dogs over weekend in San Fernando Valley

A Woodland Hills resident is heartbroken after his beloved pet dog was killed by a coyote on Friday.

Alvin Yusin said that Nokia, his 40 pound rescue dog, was usually free to come and go from his house to the backyard as she pleased. On Friday, however, he noticed that she was gone for an unusually long time, and when he went to check his backyard he found that she had been brutally attacked. 

"I start to cry, because it's like a feeling that maybe, could I have done something?" Yusin said, fighting back tears. "No."

Yusin says that Nokia was attacked in the gras spot in his backyard, somehow finding a way to crawl several feet to hide under a table, but by that time, it was too late.  

He called his neighbor, hoping that something could be done to save her. 

"It took me a second to register what was going on," said Tiffany Fraser, Yusin's neighbor, who detailed a graphic scene in the backyard. 

They rushed Nokia to an emergency veterinary clinic, which determined that she had been attacked by a lone coyote and that Nokia fought back, but ended up in really bad shape. 

That veterinarian gave them two options — a long term recovery plan with no promise of survival or to put her down so she would no longer be in pain. 

Yusin made the extremely difficult decision for the latter. 

Now he, along with many others in Woodland Hills, are on extremely high alert over the unusually high amount of coyote-related incidents plaguing their neighborhood.

Just last week, around a mile and a half away from Yusin's home, a coyote bit and dragged a two-year-old girl in broad daylight before her parents stepped in to save her. That coyote, however, was captured and euthanized by wildlife officials. 

One wildlife expert, Rebecca Dmytryk with Humane Wildlife Control, said contrary to popular belief that's not the right way to go about it. 

"Coyote behavior mirrors human behavior," she said. "So if you've got a problem coyote in your neighborhood, you've got a problem neighbor. You've got somebody doing something that's attracting them into the neighborhood."

She said simple things like leaving pet food outside — including bird seed — or shying away from the animal instead of showing dominance when one comes nearby. 

About 20 miles away in Granada Hills, the Wynn family had all three of their pet chihuahuas attacked by a group of coyotes Sunday morning. 

"I feel for my daughter, she keeps saying, 'It's my fault, I let them out,'" said Tamara Wynn. 

Jarring surveillance footage from Wynn's home shows coyotes scurrying through their backyard, one jumping over a several-foot high wall as their daughter runs back into the house in a panic. 

She said that her daughter let the dogs out in the morning as she usually does.

"She came back in for a second and went right back out. Didn't hear anything, but she saw one of the chihuahuas in the coyote's mouth, hopping over the fence," Wynn said.

That coyote took Gizmo, Wynn's emotional support dog, over the fence, while Salem, another chihuahua was killed. Veterinarians are still working to treat Ella, who has a severe puncture wound. 

Wynn believes that the coyotes had been surveying the dogs as prey for several days before finding the right opportunity to attack. 

"There are coyotes, we've seen them in the front street, but we've never seen them in the backyard," she said. "We think they learned the pattern and were hiding in wait."

Humane Wildlife Control will host a virtual meeting on Tuesday to address the issue and present possible solutions. For more information and to take part in the meeting, visit their Facebook page.