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Brave pup faces off with coyotes in backyard, comes out nearly unscathed

WESTBOROUGH, Mass. — As soon as you begin watching the surveillance footage, you immediately start praying for the small Maltese at the center of a brawl with coyotes.

The pup, barking at the wild animals, stands on its back legs until the coyotes come in for the kill. Immediately, Louie The Maltese bolts for a nearby bush, almost disappearing for a brief moment in the video's dark, grainy imaging.

Louie then scampers away, running back into the safety of his home. Nearly unscathed from what could have been a deadly encounter, the tiny dog is lucky to be home tonight.

It all started with Louie and his owner Stacey Israel's nightly trip outside of their Westboro home.

"We have an invisible fence so I don’t put them on a leash, they usually go out do their thing and come right back," said Israel. "Lilly (Israel's other dog) came right back to me and all of a sudden I heard him barking and I knew the minute I heard him barking there was something out there."

Israel, who was outside at the time of the attack, was standing behind her house as the situation unfolded. If it wasn't for her Ring camera, she would've had no idea how many coyotes there were and how close they got to her dog.

"I started screaming and then and he ran through the bushes," said Israel. "I was horrified, horrified."

Animal control told Israel the coyotes were likely a family teaching their youngest to hunt.

She says one of the coyotes lunged towards Louie, grabbing him the wrong way and losing their grip - a move that undoubtedly saved the little dog's life.

"One of them picked up Louie wrong, they picked him up way down on his back instead of on his back so they didn’t have a good grip on him," said Israel.

In light of what happened in her backyard, Israel alerted her neighbors to be vigilant of their dogs, especially at night. Donna Pilkington, Israel's neighbor, runs a dog walking business and is spreading the word to dog owners in the area.

"It was so scary, how they all work together as a pack and the way that they charged him and that he made it thank goodness," said Pilkington.

"They’ve attacked some big ones at the end of the street, so the pack mentality is that if they come out and figure they can take it down, they’ll do it depending on how [many of them] there are."

Louie has a small wound on his back, his battle scar from emerging victorious from his bump-in with the bad neighborhood kids. Now, he and his sister Lilly are no longer allowed outside without a leash.

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