Kelowna

An apology won't bring back a family's dog, but it does provide some closure.

The trapper whose hunting trap killed a Kelowna area family's dog over the weekend has contacted the family to apologize for the incident.

Mike Miner and his two daughters were walking the family dogs near Philpott Road in Joe Rich Sunday when Sasha, a six-year-old German Shepherd mix, got her head caught in a metal animal trap designed to catch animals such as coyotes, cougars and wolves.

“The trapper has contacted me and he was very apologetic and offered to replace the dog and to come by and talk to me. When the trapper did call, there was a little bit of closure for me,” says Miner.

He says the trapper, who is a resident of Vancouver, is planning to sell the trap line, which is currently near the ten kilometre mark on the forest service road.

“He said he would move the trap line further up the road to the 25 kilometre mark and he is going to sell the trap line, he doesn't want anything to do with it anymore. It might have something to do with this incident, probably not everything, but something to do with it. When he sells the trap line he is putting it in the agreement that it has to be at the 25K mark.”

Miner says he isn't going to take the trapper up on his offer to buy him a new dog.

“We aren't going to replace the dog, it's not like you can go and buy a puppy and everything is better. We just take it one day at a time.”

Conservation officer, Jesse Jones, says the trapper did nothing illegal.

“Everything he was doing was legitimate, it was a legal trap line, he was not doing anything wrong, it was just an unfortunate incident,” says Jones.

He says a conservation officer went up to help Miner remove Sasha from the trap.

“To be honest, my conservation officer has been here 17 years and this is the first he has heard of this happening.”

Jones says trappers have to check their lines frequently, which is one of the reasons they are often placed close to the road.

“Normally they are on a ploughed road or a snowmobile trail and literally it's a trap line, there's several traps on the line, so the trapper drives along checking them. The reason they are close to the road like that is so he doesn't have to walk far in to check every trap.”

He says signage is not mandatory around trap lines and in fact, might make things worse.

“I suspect if the trap lines were signed, we'd have more issues. It may attract people to the area to go look for the trap and it also may cause vandalism.”

Kelowna-Lake Country MLA, Norm Letnick, says so far he has only received one email comment about this incident.

Link: Family pet killed by trapper's line