Coyote attacks in the last few days have Barrie dog-walkers on the lookout at Sunnidale Park after two separate attacks on canines, including one incident where a small dog was snatched up and taken away in the park on Tuesday.
A coyote came out of the nearby woods and grabbed the small dog, which was leashed and with its owner, then retreated back into the forest.
The dog has not been recovered.
“That got to me so much, with that lady losing her Pomeranian to the coyote. What a horrible thing to have happened,” Terry Johnston told BarrieToday while out walking his small dog.
Johnston is a resident on nearby Shirley Avenue and has lived there since 1992.
“I’ve blocked (a coyote) a couple of times with the car,” he added. “I say ‘what are you doing, why don’t you move?’ and he just looks at me.”
Last June, Johnston was out walking his dog in the area after dark, armed with a flashlight, when he noticed his dog was pulling on the leash.
“I turned around and there was a coyote right there, so I turned the flashlight on him and I started growling. He backed off as I moved towards him,” Johnston said.
The coyote retreated into the nearby bushes.
There's concern among residents about what has been happening, he added.
“I was thinking of going to the next city council meeting to bring it up," Johnston said.
Johnston says he only noticed the coyotes in the park area in the last five or six years. He doesn’t recall seeing them prior to that time. Since then, he thinks they have lost all fear of humans.
“He’s pretty brazen. He was right in the middle of Sunnidale Park, just laying there looking around,” Johnston added.
Petra Czech, who owns a German shepherd and also lives nearby, says she visits the park prepared for any encounter with coyotes.
“It is concerning, because of the little dogs. I’m hoping that our dog will scare him away,” she said.
“My husband does carry a big stick with him. We just stay in the perimeter — we don’t actually go in the woods so much anymore," Czech added.
Czech describes seeing coyotes many times in and around Sunnidale Park, and has captured photographs of them, albeit blurry.
“One day, he was actually too close for comfort,” she said.
It’s not only the safety of smaller dogs people are concerned about, but small children are also frequent visitors to the city's central park.
“I don’t know if I would personally leave my children long or far enough for them to be exposed to an animal like that,” said Sydney Statulevicius, who lives in Barrie's Allandale area and is a regular at the park with her kids.
Today, they are there to slide down a snow-covered hill close to the woods.
When asked about the attacks and how they may be prepared while at the park from now on, Statulevicius believes educating the children on how to be wary of coyotes is key.
“I think that will spark a lot of conversation with my child, for sure,” she said.
