Coyotes are well-adapted to living in close proximity to humans and entering urban spaces, presenting an ongoing issue of human-wildlife conflict as concerned pet owners push for extreme measures to keep their pets safe. In this community outreach study, we distributed an online survey open to the public to report data on previously or currently owned cats and dogs including size, breed, fur coloration, amount of time spent outdoors, and interactions with coyotes. Reports from 1301 dogs showed that smaller dogs, dogs that spend more time outdoors daily, and dogs with low fur color contrast experience more severe interactions with coyotes. This finding lends support to our hypothesis that coyotes may generalize their learned avoidance of skunks to also hesitate to attack domestic pets with similarly high fur color contrast. We did not find any effect of pelage color contrast or time spent outdoors on the severity of coyote interactions in the reports from 590 cats. We propose that, unlike cats, (a) the greater tendency for dogs to defend themselves aggressively against other canids paired with (b) high contrast coat color patterns, may trigger coyotes’ learned aposematic avoidance of skunks, and give black-and-white dogs a greater chance of survival. In improving our understanding of why coyotes target some pets and not others, we hope to inform pet owners of potential risk factors that may make their pets more vulnerable to coyote attacks.