Brave terrier defends 10-year-old owner from coyote during walk in Toronto

A pint-sized Yorkshire Terrier named Macy was captured going toe-to-toe with a much larger coyote in Toronto, defending her owner, 10-year-old Lily Kwan, as she called for help.

"My dog would do anything for our family, so I’m actually not surprised that she did that," Lily’s mother Dorothy told News 6. "I would never guess that a coyote, you know, would come out during the day and especially with someone screaming and yelling it still was not fazed. It just kept coming after her and our dog, you know, despite all the yelling. It was quite aggressive."

“She’s our little hero,” Ms Kwan added.

During the encounter, Macy runs in circles around the coyote, seemingly distracting her while Lily runs away. At one point, the large canine picks up the dog and shakes it violently. Macy sustained injuries to her torso and leg that required surgery, the family said, and it raised tens of thousands of dollars on GoFundMe to support the treatment.

The encounter began when Lily was walking Macy to a nearby park. As a coyote approached, she ran away, dropping the leash as she went.

"And I thought, oh my gosh, what is going to happen, because the other day I saw Facebook postings of the same coyote chasing kids, biting one kid and I thought am I next, what is going to happen to me?" Lily told CTV News.

Coyote attacks on humans are rare, according to the Humane Society of the United States, with more people being killed by flying champagne corks each year.

Still, coyotes have been expanding their natural range further and further into urban areas over the last century, and now comfortably live among humans in many US cities, eating a mix of small wildlife and garbage.

“The nature of the urban coyote is to stay out of our way,” Seth Magle, director of the Urban Wildlife Institute at the Lincoln Park Zoo in Chicago, told The New York Times in 2020. “They’re really good at this magic trick of living in the heart of our cities while avoiding us.”