SHERMAN, TEXAS -- Lou Earl is a self-proclaimed dog-lover.

"Oh I love my dogs, they're family," Lou said.

Right now, she's giving her dog Angel more love and attention than normal.

"If she wouldn't have been such a heavy little muscular Boston Terrier, he would've carried her away for dinner," Lou said.

Angel is a playful dog, but last Monday night, she played with the wrong animal.

"She had been attacked by something in the backyard," Lou said.

Lou says something jumped into her fenced-in backyard, and took a bite out of Angel's left front leg.

"We thought at first it was a bobcat, but then we found out there were coyote hairs in her wounds. The fence was broken and the creek is really close," Lou said.

The surprising thing about this attack: Lou's house is off Lamberth Road in Sherman, just a tenth of a mile from highway 75.

"Generally it's an issue for more of the outlying areas where there's more fields, but they have been known to come into town from time to time depending on what the food situation is," Sgt. D.M. Hampton with Sherman police said.

The SPCA says coyote sightings have become common in urban areas.

They suggest building a fence at least two meters high, watching over your pets while they're outdoors, and making sure you aren't feeding coyotes without realizing it, by securing garbage bins and keeping pet food inside.

Lou says one thing's for sure: that coyote will not be coming back to mess with this dog.

"Angel's doing better. She's going to make it, she's a little toughie, she fought him and she was not going to be carried away," Lou said.

Lou says that coyote isn't the only critter that's wandered close to her home. She's seen wild turkeys and a bobcat.

Grayson County Animal Control says they don't usually see coyotes come this far into the city, and they believe this to be an isolated incident.