You can read this and I think it will enlighten you about hawks. Even if they cannot carry your small dog, their talons would probably injure it very badly or fatally.
Raptor kills 4-pound dog in Brookline
Thursday, December 23, 2004
By Pohla Smith, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
Puppies, kittens or even tiny dogs shouldn't be left outside if birds of prey fly around the neighborhood.
Frank and Barbara Rozzo of Brookline learned that the hard way Tuesday. Rozzo left their four-pound Yorkshire terrier, Gizmo, alone for a couple of minutes on her front porch, and when she returned she found the dog had been fatally injured by a large bird.
She believes it was a hawk.
"It's a very rare occurrence," said Jill Argall, director of the Animal Rescue League of Western Pennsylvania Wildlife Center in Penn Hills.
"Usually a hawk can't pick up anything more than three or four pounds," she added. "I get a lot of calls from people worried about kittens and puppies. My best advice is go outside with your animal if you've got a hawk in the area."
Argall said there are "plenty of red-tailed hawks in the area but they don't pose a very big threat." The city also has peregrine falcons. Both are state and federally protected birds.
Mel Schake, superintendent for information and education for the southwest region of the Pennsylvania Game Commission, echoed Argall.
"It's a pretty unusual kind of a thing. I don't recall hearing about anything like that. Usually even small dogs are not at risk, though, obviously, it's not that it can't happen," said Schake, who has been on the job 23 years.
There was no doubt about what befell Gizmo because the bird hung around to see what was going to happen to his prey after he was scared off when Barbara Rozzo came outside and found Gizmo, near death, in the bushes where the bird had carried him.
Rozzo said Gizmo never left the front porch in the winter because he doesn't like to walk in the snow. She put him out and left him long enough to let the family's two Akitas out into the back yard.
She then returned to check on Gizmo.
"He wasn't there," she said. "I went to call him, and there were no footprints. I kept on calling for Gizmo, but there was no Gizmo."
She yelled to a neighbor that her dog was missing just before her storm door banged against a railing, startling the bird.
"Up front, right up in front of me, flies this enormous hawk. He flew out down the driveway onto the cable wires," Rozzo said. She then found Gizmo, shredded by the bird's talons from the neck down.
The bird still hung around for a while, flying to other wires to keep watching.
Trash collectors told Rozzo they later saw the bird flying around the neighborhood.
"That's a pretty bold bird," Argall said. "But when they have a kill, they're going to hang around to see if they can get it back."
Argall and Schake stressed how unusual such an event like this is. Falcons and hawks generally feed on smaller birds and small mammals.
"These birds are certainly capable of taking a rabbit or something like that, and that's not a lot smaller [than Gizmo], " Schake said.
"But people need to know two things -- that this is a really unusual event and we don't know for sure what [kind of bird] it was. And people should know that they can be pretty confident if they keep they're pet in close proximity to them."
Argall added, "They're more afraid of you than you are of them."
The Rozzos yesterday still were mourning the loss of their little pet.
"I couldn't have lost a relative and felt as bad as with this dog. He slept with my husband. He sat on the couch beside him. He had his own chair at the table," Rozzo said.
"He was my buddy," Frank Rozzo added.
http://www.postgazette.com/pg/04358/431317.stm