On a beautiful November 4 day, my dog and I set off for a walk in an area we had often hiked together. It was a Forest Service road many before us had hiked, biked, hunted, skied, snowmobiled and four-wheeled on. Clearly, this has been a popular spot with local recreationists and sports enthusiasts. And most people around Poplar Lake had visited it alone, in groups, or like me, with my dog.
We started down the road toward an old beaver dam and pond; I was walking ahead while my dog nosed around in the grassy area along the roadside. I heard a scream and looking back saw the dog wrestling with something and crying out as he moved. I backtracked up the hill to find his paw caught in a leghold trap that had been set in the grass and was invisible to me as I walked by, but aroused the curiosity of the dog with the awful result that his paw was caught in a spring-loaded trap that I could not release. I drove to a neighbor’s cabin for help. As darkness settled, he worked to release the stake anchoring the trap and we got the dog in the car with the trap still attached to his paw. I drove over to my nearby neighbors, both ER nurses who work in the Cities, but were home that week.
Cool, all business and terrific problem solvers, they muzzled the dog’s jaws, Googled the trap type, sprung the trap freeing the dog’s paw and prescribed some household meds. It was over in ten minutes thanks to their professional no-nonsense approach to the problem. I contacted the vet and got the dog into the clinic the next morning.
My dog was second in line that day as the vet was working on another dog caught similarly that had sustained much more damage than had mine. A subsequent conversation with two conservation officers revealed that my dog was the third dog to have been caught in a leghold trap that week.
A review of trapping regulations reveals that they specify what to do AFTER a dog is caught and does warn trappers to”….take great care to avoid accidentally capturing dogs.” How do they do this? The regs are silent on any forewarning procedures. I’m certain that the owners of the other dogs would favor some sort of trap set marking that signifies one is set nearby. The critters would not be alerted but we would be and would keep our dogs on leashes if we knew trappers were operating in a certain area.
The Forest Service promotes multi-use of their lands. It seems to me that hiking and trapping are not compatible uses when occurring in the same area, in this case a well-known foot traffic area. So how do we establish safeguards in the law that protects both hikers and dogs from this unforeseen threat of set traps? The DNR manages game and does so also on federal lands making this a rather complicated multi-agency issue. I am not anti-trapping rather pro-safety for both “two and four pawed” hikers. I welcome suggestions from our trapping community. My neighbors are my true heroes in this incident. Thank you.
Biz Clark, Poplar Lake
Leave a Reply