Reports of another coyote attack on a domestic dog in a park in Monmouth County, New Jersey and officials are saying that what killed a chihuahua the other day may have been another domestic dog.
An owner walking his dog in Shark River Park unleashed, said he saw his dog being chased by two coyotes along the edge of a fence. His dog suffered some puncture wounds on its rear legs.
Yesterday I reported that a chihuahua had been attacked and killed in Middletown near where other dogs and two children had been attacked.
Now officials are saying it wasn’t a chihuahua but a fox terrier. They are also saying the terrier may have been the victim of a domestic dog attack.
“We’re not saying conclusively that it was not a coyote, but based on what the biologists observed, we think it could have been a domestic animal,” said Darlene Yuhas, a spokeswoman for the Department of Environmental Protection.
The dead dog, now identified as a fox terrier, not a Chihuahua as township officials initially reported, was attacked on its stomach, according to an examination by state biologists. The injuries are similar to those common in fights between domestic dogs rather than in predatory attacks by coyotes, which tend to seize their prey by the neck and head, the biologists said.
Coyotes were initially blamed because the dog’s owner, who witnessed the attack, reported that a coyote seized the animal within seconds after the dog was let out of the house at 4:15 a.m. Police who arrived at the scene also observed two coyotes in the area, township officials said.
But domestic dog tracks, not those of a coyote, were found at the scene, Yuhas said.
Coyote tracks are more oval than those of domestic dogs, according to state biologists, who have been trying to trap coyotes in Middletown since a 5-year-old boy was attacked on Pomo Court by one of the wild canines on May 21. Earlier, a toddler was attacked by a coyote on Kings Highway East on April 6.
Are we to believe that story or are they just saying this to quiet the masses?
Tom Remington
