Paris Hilton's chihuahua Diamond Baby went missing from Beverly Hills in September 2022, and no recovery has ever been publicly reported. In a post published on September 19, 2022, Hilton said the dog had been gone since the previous Wednesday, September 14, and that her household was in the middle of a move at the time. "My heart is broken. I have been in tears, so sad, and depressed," she wrote, in comments reported by GMA News Online. The case is remembered now for an explanation nobody ever confirmed: that a coyote took her. The coyote risk to dogs this size is real and documented. What happened to Diamond Baby is not.
What Hilton actually said
The verified account comes almost entirely from Hilton's own posts and the outlets that reported them. She said she was at a photo shoot when the dog got out, and that one of the movers must have left a door open. Diamond Baby is described in that coverage as a small black and brown female chihuahua, shy with strangers. Hilton set up a dedicated tip address, [email protected], and offered what she called a big reward with no questions asked, reported by Entertainment Tonight at $10,000. She hired a pet detective, a dog whisperer and pet psychics, and said the search extended to dog-finding drones.
About three weeks later, on October 4, 2022, Entertainment Tonight published an update quoting Hilton: "I miss my Diamond Baby so much it hurts!" and "I know she's alive out there somewhere!" In the same report, she said the pet communicators she had consulted told her someone had the dog. No sighting, recovery or confirmed outcome followed.
The coyote version was never confirmed
The coyote explanation entered the record through tabloid coverage citing unnamed experts, not through animal control, police, or any recovered remains. The distinction matters: no agency confirmed a coyote took Diamond Baby, nothing was reported found, and Hilton's own stated belief pointed toward a person having picked the dog up. Everything after "she got out of the house" remains unestablished.
That uncertainty is ordinary rather than suspicious. A four-pound dog loose in a hillside neighborhood has several plausible endings, including traffic, a stranger taking her in, and wildlife, and most owners in that situation never learn which one applied. Two of those three have their own file here: chihuahuas are practiced escape artists the moment a door stays open, and they are also, unfortunately, among the breeds thieves target.
What the research says about coyotes and small dogs
Strip away the speculation and the underlying risk still holds up. Researchers from the National Park Service and California State University Northridge collected more than 3,100 coyote scat samples across the Los Angeles area and found that human-related food sources, including garbage, ornamental fruit and domestic cats, made up roughly 60 to 75 percent of urban coyote diets. Cat remains appeared in 20 percent of scat from the most urban coyotes, compared with 4 percent in suburban areas, according to the National Park Service summary of the study, published in PLOS ONE and released on March 12, 2020. Coyotes in dense Los Angeles neighborhoods are not visitors. They live there.
Dogs show up less often in diet studies than cats do, but they show up in attack records, and size is the variable that matters. The Cook County Urban Coyote Research Project, run in association with Ohio State University, documented 70 attacks on dogs and 10 on cats in the Chicago metropolitan area, and reported that small breeds were attacked disproportionately: 20 small dogs, 3 medium and 6 large. Reported attacks on pets in that region rose from zero to two per year around 1990 to between six and 14 per year by 2004. The researchers also found more attacks on dogs in late fall, winter and early spring than in the warmer months, which tracks coyote breeding and pup-rearing season rather than summer heat. A chihuahua sits at the small end of the smallest bracket in that data, which is the whole point of the size arithmetic this site keeps returning to.
The precautions that hold up
The California Department of Fish and Wildlife's coyote guidance is short and unglamorous: do not leave small pets unsupervised outside, bring pets in at night, leash pets while walking, and carry a whistle or other noisemaker. Remove the attractants that bring coyotes into a yard in the first place by securing trash and recycling and by not leaving pet food or water bowls out after dark. If a coyote appears, the agency's advice is to make yourself look bigger and make noise, yelling, clapping or blowing a whistle, rather than turning away. Fencing helps but is not a solution on its own, since coyotes climb and jump better than most owners assume.
For a dog this size, two additions are worth the trouble. First, gear: a properly fitted harness she cannot back out of, a short leash rather than a long retractable one in coyote country, and a current ID tag alongside a registered microchip, all covered in the gear guide. Second, door discipline during exactly the situations that produced this story: moving day, contractors, parties, deliveries. The single confirmed fact in the Diamond Baby case is that a door was open when it should not have been, which is the most preventable link in the entire chain.
Frequently asked questions
Was Paris Hilton's chihuahua really taken by a coyote?
It was never confirmed. The coyote account came from tabloid coverage citing unnamed experts, and no animal control agency, police report or recovered remains supported it. Hilton herself said publicly in October 2022 that she believed the dog was alive and that someone had her. The honest answer is that Diamond Baby's fate is unknown.
Can a coyote take a small dog that is on a leash?
Yes, and it has been reported in urban areas. A leash keeps a dog from wandering into trouble, but it does not deter a coyote, which is why CDFW pairs leashing with a noisemaker and close supervision. Keep the leash short in areas with known coyote activity, and pick a small dog up rather than trying to fend an animal off at ground level.
When is the risk to small dogs highest?
Cook County research found more attacks on dogs in late fall, winter and early spring than in summer, coinciding with breeding and pup-rearing rather than hot weather. Coyotes are also most active around dawn and dusk, though urban animals move at any hour. In practical terms, unsupervised outdoor time is the risk factor year round.
The lasting value of the Diamond Baby story is not the ending, because there isn't one on the record. It is the beginning: a door left open during a move, a very small dog outside on her own, and a search that turned to detectives, drones and psychics precisely because ordinary methods had nothing to work with. The coyote research explains why owners in Southern California take this seriously. The open door explains why most of the prevention happens indoors.
