Leg-hold Traps: made in Hell, available on Earth
It’s amazing how a day can go from being a heavenly day to hell in one instant. Today was such a day. Pete and I are wending our way back to CA, but going slowly, taking obscure roads through remote areas of the west. We stopped to spend a wonderful night with Pete’s oldest daughter Nancy in Las Vegas, then the next day stopped to visit the Navy Corpsman who’s life Pete saved in Korea, and whose life the Corpsman saved. That was a beautiful visit.
Today we saw a dirt road on public land in Nevada that went up to a remote peak, very beautiful rocks. A perfect place to let the dogs run free, something we do three times a day on these road trips. It was a spot so beautiful we found it reminiscent of the gorgeous “Garden of the Gods” in New Mexico. We found a cattle watering spot (and our dogs are fine around cattle) up near the peak and parked the van, all of us pouring out to enjoy the beauty, stretch our legs, get a drink.
After we got out, the dogs ran about here and there happily for several minutes and we started to explore the peak. All of a sudden I hear Sarah, our youngster Capay Valley dog, literally scream in pain. I feared a skirmish with coyotes but knew we had troop numbers on our side. I rushed to where I heard her; saw her under a mountain juniper, looking frantically at me, writhing in pain. I knew in that instant what I would find — I’ve seen it dozens of time in books and videos. The horror of the steel leg-hold trap, set for “predators” by lazy, stupid men. My heart sank to the bottom of the world as I screamed for Pete to get over to where I was. My beautiful young athletic dog’s paw was held crushed between the jaws of steel, which had been baited with a scented scrap of material, and attached to a long chain wrapped around the tree trunk. Sarah’s young body wracked with pain, she gnashed her teeth and implored me to free her.
