Wily Coyotes, Wary Dogs
Toronto pet owners struggle to co-exist with increasingly bold urban wildlife
Words by Zosia Bielski - Photography by Sarah Espedido
THE GLOBE AND MAIL - Published September 9, 2025
Agata Piskunowicz and Kira are still regulars at High Park after a coyote attack two years ago, but they take precautions: The leash and protective vest stay on, and the dog stays close.
On a May morning two years ago, Agata Piskunowicz and her dog Kira left for their walk through High Park, a sprawling green gem in Toronto’s west end.
Ms. Piskunowicz let Kira, an 11-pound toy poodle mix, off-leash down a wide, unfenced path – a costly mistake, she acknowledges.
Up on a hillside, something caught her eye: a dog with a “really strange” silhouette racing down toward her and Kira.
“This thing, which I thought is someone’s dog, comes running straight for her,” she recalled. “It grabs her by the neck and shakes her violently.”
She began to yell aggressively, hoping to ward the coyote off. Instead, the animal bounded into the bush with Kira in its mouth.
Ms. Piskunowicz screamed frantically for help from passersby. She’d eventually discover that her dog had escaped and made it to a busy intersection, only to tumble under an SUV. Two good Samaritans ferried the bleeding poodle to a nearby animal hospital. Kira was treated for puncture wounds to the throat, neck and back, a hematoma in her eyes from the shaking, and bruising to her stomach from the car collision.
Ruby Kooner walks her dog Luna in Ordnance Triangle Park, an area with frequent coyote encounters that have put residents on high alert. After Kooner's other dog, Amber, died from a coyote attack, she formed the Coyote Safety Coalition.
On a Saturday night last November, Ruby Kooner and her 13-year-old dog Amber set out for their routine walk before bedtime. Normally it was a quick outing, on a leash, along a path outside Ms. Kooner’s condominium in Ordnance Triangle Park, a community wedged between two rail corridors near Toronto’s historic Fort York site.
As Amber, a 17-pound mix resembling a Maltipoo, did her business, Ms. Kooner looked down to retrieve a bag. “Two coyotes came out of nowhere and ambushed us,” she recalled. “I was in shock. Mentally you don’t understand what’s happening.”
Ruby Kooner, with her dog Luna, faced off against two coyotes at this Toronto park with another pet, Amber. When the coyotes started biting her dog, Kooner was jolted out of her shock. She scooped Amber up and kicked at the animals, which kept advancing.
“I was screaming at a level I never screamed at,” she said.
Three women walking the path intervened and helped ward off the coyotes. Ms. Kooner rushed her bloody dog to an emergency animal hospital, where she was treated for deep puncture wounds and put on antibiotics for the next three weeks. Two days after this, Amber went into sepsis. She died in an animal hospital a week later.