A morning walk turned ugly for a labradoodle on Thursday after the dog's mouth and paw were snared on fishing hooks that had been threaded through a chunk of bait.
Professional dogwalker Hallie Mitchell was leading six dogs on a trek between the Grouse Grind parking lot and Skyline Drive when Kelly, a two-year-old labradoodle, strayed from the pack to bite into one of approximately five beef kidneys lying on the ground.
Approximately eight hooks joined by wire were looped through the beef. The wire was attached to a rope that had been covered in duct tape and strapped around a tree.
Kelly immediately jerked backwards after two hooks became embedded in the animal.
"I was able to cry out for help to Powerline (trail) and two women scrambled up the hill to help me," Mitchell said.
Alix Dunham was on the trail when she heard Mithcell's voice.
"Just walking a dog on the Powerline (Trail) and heard a girl screaming for help in the woods, which is chilling in itself," Dunham said.
Dunham and neighbour Kathy Palfy each headed to the woods to help while Mitchell cradled Kelly.
"My main concern was restraining Kelly so that he wasn't jerking the hooks farther into his mouth, so I basically had one arm under his neck holding his head toward the hooks and my other under his belly," she said. "All I could really do was a keep an eye on my other dogs and call for help."
The neighbours quickly arrived on the scene, seeing what Dunham reported was a "perfect dog-sized trap."
"The other dogs were all running around loose, worried, freaking out and she couldn't leave the dog that had been trapped," Dunham said. "The other dogs in the meantime, because they weren't the smartest, obviously, kept trying to get at the meat the whole time. It was pretty chaotic."
As Palfy corralled the remaining dogs, Dunham assisted Mitchell.
"The dogwalker was holding the dog and I pulled the hooks out of the poor little guy's mouth and his paw," Dunham said.
Mitchell utilized her canine first aid training before taking the dog to the North Shore Veterinary Clinic.
"I couldn't even find wounds, so they were probably pretty minor," said Shaunne Gorrie, the veterinarian who examined the dog. "He was lucky, I guess."
Kelly is a resilient dog, according to owner Christine Smith.
"He is perfectly fine, in fact I think we're all more traumatized than he ever was," she said.
The situation could have been much worse, Smith added. "We were quite lucky the hooks that were in his mouth and his paw were not barbed . . . because there were a few barbed hooks on that trap."
The craftsmanship of the trap suggests a determined trapper, according to Mitchell.
"It was very intricate and you could tell it took a lot of time to construct it. It was very premeditated," she said.
Returning to the site with an RCMP officer later that afternoon, Mitchell said she noticed firepits and other signs that people may be living there.
Aside from a few harsh words directed at a dogwalker a few weeks ago, Mitchell said she has never noticed ill-will towards the commercial dogwalkers who regularly stroll through the area. "Both the vet and the RCMP officer said that they haven't seen anything like this before," she said.
The incident has prompted Dunham to warn her neighbours about the area.
"It's still really haunting me, creeping me out," Dunham said. "I always refer to this area as the little bubble because nothing shocking ever happens up here, it's just like Pleasantville."
