Sue Murphree walked outside her Scottsdale home early last week to find three scraggly coyotes staring back at her. “They saw me coming and they just froze,” Murphree said. “Then they leaped upon the 6-foot block wall and hopped into my neighbor’s yard.”

She soon heard yelping coming from three houses down. She ran into her neighbor’s yard through an unlocked gate and saw the coyotes surrounding a small Jack Russell terrier.

“She was pinned up against the wall by two coyotes,” she said. She scared them away and whisked the terrified pooch to safety.

“That little dog would have been dead if I hadn’t heard it,” she said.

Murphree’s encounter is not uncommon in north Scottsdale. An increasing number of residents are finding coyotes prowling their neighborhoods, spurring concern about pet safety.

“People’s pets or domestic animals probably make up half of their diet, if not even a little more,” Arizona Game and Fish Department biologist Randy Babb said of urban coyotes. “They are on the prowl for any kind of opportunity to exploit small pets.”

Murphree, a show dog handler, said she keeps her dogs in an enclosed dog run when outside and has recently installed a rod iron gate around her yard. Some of her neighbors have started taking similar precautions, she said.

“Everybody’s starting to keep their dogs and cats in,” she said. “People are very concerned about it.”

Murphree said she believes that new building development at the nearby Salt River Pima-Maricopa Indian Community has uprooted some coyotes, pushing them into urbanized neighborhoods to find their next meal.

“When a chunk of desert is developed or plowed under — basically a neighborhood is destroyed to create a neighborhood,” Babb said. “So all the animals that lived there originally are now displaced and they end up moving around, trying to find a home somewhere.”

Coyotes rarely attack humans, but pets are a different story.

Scraped, scratched and seriously injured pets that have suffered a run-in with a coyote are a common sight at north Scottsdale animal hospitals.

“We see way too many,” Scott Duston, a veterinarian at the Paradise Valley Emergency Animal Hospital in Scottsdale. “Probably at least two or three a week at this office.”

Rattlesnakes and owls also commonly attack small animals, but coyotes usually cause the most damage.

“The coyote attacks seem to be pretty severe, if not fatal,” he said. “They usually have puncture wounds in their skins, and they have to have surgery.”

To prevent attacks, people should be vigilant at keeping an eye on their pets, especially in areas frequented by coyotes.

“I would really stress that people not leave their animals unattended outside,” Duston said. “Definitely, the smaller dogs and cats should not be left outside.”

The coyote population has flourished around the state, according to the Game and Fish Department.

After reports of 10 such sightings in Paradise Valley, the police department held a coyote awareness meeting in March to address residents’ concerns. Sun City also has reported a number of coyotes roaming streets.

When Murphree had her coyote encounter, she called Scottsdale police, Arizona Game and Fish and private animal removal companies trying to find a solution. They all basically told her the same thing — coyotes are here to stay.

To warn neighbors, Murphree distributed fliers telling people to “be on the lookout for coyotes.”

“It’s very prevalent out here,” she said. “And it’s very scary for us with dogs and cats.”