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The dog, who weighed nine pounds, was a few yards away when she began barking furiously.
"Then I saw something had picked her up and was shaking her," she said last week. "I rushed toward her, screaming 'Checkers! Checkers! Checkers!'
"That's when I saw the coyote - which looked like a big German Shepherd - drop Checkers to the ground and run away. It had picked her up from her hindquarters with its jaws, shook her, and broke her back. That, I learned later, is what they do before they devour them."
She paused.
"Checkers managed to drag herself inside in obvious pain and I took her to the vet the next day, where x-rays revealed her spine had been fractured in several places.
"My husband, Arnold, and his four kids - now all grown - had Checkers for nine years and I married him four years ago. She had become part of the family.
"It was really hard. I felt horrible. We tried to keep her alive in the next two weeks; she wouldn't eat so I tried to feed her with an eye dropper.
"But finally she turned yellow and was in obvious pain so we put her to sleep."
Mrs. Arnold said she lost a cat named Coconut seven years ago, and, while she could never prove it, she is convinced it was eaten by a coyote. "We found her fur, all of it, on the grass," she reported.
Her fears are echoed by those of Town Historian and Probate Judge Joel E. Helander, who said he lost a pet cat to a coyote two years ago.
"I lost my cat, Pumpkin - he was 12 years old - on June 1, 2005," he said. "He was actually a neighborhood celebrity who was killed by a coyote in a neighbor's front yard on Vineyard Point Road just 25 feet from the front door.
"They are brazen and wily and cunning," he said, "and I am hearing reports of missing pets, mainly cats, from people all over town."
Helander said while no one knows for sure how many of the missing animals were coyote victims, he is relatively certain - as are other former cat owners he has spoken to - that a number of them are.
A book on the subject called "Solving Coyote Problems - how to co-exist with North America's most persistent predator" by John Trout Jr. was published by Lions Press through Globe Pequot on Goose Lane here, in 2001. The book dealt with the issue in depth, but is now out of print.
"It seems a new species is here that lives 10 to 15 years and has no known predators, nothing to take them out," Helander said.
But Paul Rego, wildlife biologist with the state Department of Environmental Protection who works in Burlington, said while the number of complaints about coyotes has gone up in recent years, the number of confirmed cases where pets have been attacked or killed by them has not.
He said there are now between 3,000 and 5,000 coyotes living in Connecticut and pointed out they came here from other states for the fist time about 60 years ago. "It is true they have no known predators to worry about and they do multiply quickly.
"But in the wild, we estimate they live between three and five years."
He said his office received 40 to 50 various kinds of coyote complaints a year including a small number of pet attacks, but said he thought the main DEP office in Hartford received more than that.
Rego's advice to owners of small pets worried about coyotes is:
‰Keep your pets inside, especially at dusk and during the night - when most coyote sightings and attacks occur.
‰If you need to take your pets outside, limit the amount of time they spend there.
‰Supervise them when they are outdoors.
‰Have them go outside in enclosed areas protected by fences.
Calls to the canine control office in Guilford, the animal control office in Madison and the animal shelter in Branford revealed no increase in the number of reported pet attacks by coyotes but many reports of missing animals, especially cats.
As to attacks on humans, Rego said that although a woman was attacked by a coyote at the southbound rest area in Branford on Interstate 95 last September and was bitten in the back of her knee, they are rare.
"Coyotes normally stay away from people and people normally stay away from them," he said. The coyote in Branford was being fed by employees at a McDonald's Restaurant there and he said that may have caused it to lose its fear of humans.
The woman, Maria Gicana, 36, of Queens, NY was attacked from behind in the parking lot while walking to McDonald's. She was given a tetanus shot and three rabies shots and according to Rego, is the only recorded case in Connecticut of a human being attacked by a coyote.
But there is no question people are becoming increasingly aware of them.
"When I open my window at night," Mrs. Arnold said, "I can hear them howling."
