A North Vancouver dog walker fought a coyote with her bare hands, punching the wild animal in the face to free a small dog from its jaws. The attack comes a day after a toddler was mauled by a coyote outside a Burnaby, B.C. home.
Denise Baker-Grant said she “didn’t think” and “just went for it” when she heard the Shih Tzu’s cries on the Grouse Mountain trail on Wednesday.
“I just went running up, and I grabbed the back of its neck,” she told CTV Vancouver on Thursday. “I punched it right in the side of its mouth. Right where the jaws kind of meet in the back. Its mouth popped open.”
Baker-Grant said she then threw the punctured dog to its owner, and tossed the battered coyote in another direction.
“I threw the coyote over there, and kicked and screamed and yelled. And it ran away,” she said.
The Shih Tzu was brought to a vet. Baker-Grant bruised her hand in the bout.
“He was really skinny,” she said of the animal. “(It) didn’t look healthy at all.”
The attack comes hours after another coyote encounter on the Lower Mainland left a three-year-old boy in need of more than 100 stitches.
Amanda Dycke, the boy’s mother, blames those who feed the wild animals for dulling their natural fear of humans.
“People don't understand that it's attracting them. It's making them want to come to an area they shouldn't,” she said on Wednesday. “Because people don't listen to these rules, the information that is put out there, my son is paying the price.”
Sgt. Dean Miller from the BC Conservation Officer Service advised anyone who encounters a coyote to “be big, be brave and be loud” in order to scare off the animal.
With a report from CTV Vancouver’s Jon Woodward
