Nancy Williams and her husband rushed their 12-year-old cocker spaniel, Blossom, to an emergency veterinary clinic when they found her bleeding from severe bite marks on her head from a coyote attack in their Shoal Creek Road backyard.
Williams said Blossom was having problems recovering from the Feb. 4 attack more than a month later, when they found out she had cancer. To save the dog from further pain, they had her euthanized.
"It has been a really sad time for our family. Blossom was such a big part of our life," Williams said.
Because of a growing number of coyote attacks on pets this year, people with animals who live in the Shoal Creek area should not leave pet food outside, said Town Lake Animal Center Director Dorinda Pulliam.
Since January, three pets from Shoal Creek neighborhoods, including Blossom, have died from coyote attacks. Another was seriously wounded but recovered after several weeks.
But Williams said she never left Blossom's food outside and is still shocked that the coyote jumped her five-foot fence to attack her dog.
Pulliam said that that kind of jump is the reason the city put its coyote trapping and education program into place three years ago.
The threat of attack arises from the loss of the coyotes' habitat as a result of community development, Pulliam said, which leaves the animals with nowhere to go.
"We don't want to trap and kill every coyote in the city of Austin, but the animals that have lost their fear of humans are particularly dangerous," she said.
The goal of the trapping and education program is to facilitate cohabitation between humans and wildlife in a quickly expanding city.
Austin officials advise people not to spread bird or deer feed because coyotes will eat any type of food they find.
Pulliam said cats should be kept indoors while owners are gone because cats replace the rabbits coyotes would eat in a natural environment.
Since Blossom's death, Williams said she wants to protect other neighborhood animals from Blossom's fate. She and others near Shoal Creek are planning an April 14 meeting with Austin/Travis County Health and Human Services to prevent further coyote attacks.
"This is not something I ever thought could happen in my backyard, and it needs to be addressed," Williams said.
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