LAKE CITY, Minn. — A Minnesota man said it took 15 minutes of CPR to save his dog after it was freed from the deadly grip of a hunter’s trap.“Through this whole process I’m thinking my dog is dead. She’s dying and she’s going to die,” said Loren Waalkens of Lake City.
Waalkens says his 6-year-old beagle, Frisbee, nearly died when she was caught in a fur trap last fall while rabbit hunting.Waalkens was tracking his beagles Molly and Frisbee when he noticed that the indicator for Frisbee had stopped moving.
“I thought- something is up here. Because if the older dog is on a rabbit the younger pup would have been right there with her. And it just set off alarm bells in my head,” said Waalkens.
When he found Frisbee, Waalkens said his blood went cold. “The first thing I thought was, ‘My God she’s in a trap.’ As I went up to her she looked dead,” he said.
Frisbee was caught in a body grip trap, a design favored by fur traders for it’s tremendous crushing power. With her neck clamped tightly in the trap, Waalkens knew he had little time.
“I squeezed and gave it all I had. I had seconds to get her out, seconds,” he said.
Eventually the trap released, and Waalkens spent the next 15 minutes performing CPR on the 6-year-old beagle. After a serties of chest compressions she came back to life.
“I got lucky. Very lucky and so did she,” he said.
Waalkens and many concerned hunters and pet owners are calling for a change to existing trapping laws. A number of dogs have died or been injured in traps in multiple incidents across the nation this winter. Hikers, hunters and trappers are sharing the back country, and clashes are becoming more frequent. While Waalkens does not want trapping outlawed, he says he wants the methods used to take pet safety into account: otherwise, he says more pet owners could find themselves in the same terrifying circumstances.
“I would like to defend trapping. People have the right to trap, but do not have the right to use this method,” said Waalkens.
If you spend any time with your dogs off leash in the country, please watch the following video: it could save your dog’s life.
