COEUR d'ALENE - A day of outdoor dog training took a nasty turn last week for longtime Kootenai County resident Mike Denney.

While on state endowment land in the Cougar Gulch area, Denney's 10-month-old chocolate Lab, a male dog named Lousche, caught a scent and ran up a hill.

"I heard a bloodcurdling scream," Denney said. "Initially I thought it was coyotes, but when I reached him I saw he was trapped in a foot-hold trap."

The Lab was bleeding from his paw and his mouth. Denney tried to separate the jaws of the trap, but was unable to. Trying to pull the cable the trap was attached to from the ground didn't work either.

"I was a little angry to be quite honest," Denney said. "And afraid because I didn't know how to release the trap. It was heartwrenching."

Exhausted from chasing the dog up the hill and attempting to release it, Denney said he paused to catch his breath and take a photo of Lousche in case he needed to contact Fish and Game for information on how to free it.

Eventually Denney was able to remove the trap from the cable before releasing the trap itself.

"As I was releasing him, he was biting me because he was obviously in pain," Denney said.

Lousche was taken to the vet, where the dog was placed on antibiotics and pain medication.

"He's doing pretty well now," Denney told The Press Tuesday. "He limps a little bit still, but it's pretty much a full recovery."

Denney contacted Fish and Game about the incident and said he received word that the trapper was cited for failing to check his traps within a 72-hour time frame. The incident happened, according to Denney, a couple hundred feet away from a spot where his neighbor's dog was killed by a trap in December.

"Trapping is taking other recreationists hostage," Denney said. "We should have the right to use state endowment lands without fear of harm to our animals. We have hunted and fished in Idaho all of our lives and support trapping, but there are right and wrong places to do so."

Denney, who previously worked for the Idaho Department of Lands, said he never had any experience with the trapping issue while employed by the agency. But, he said working closely with Fish and Game during that time made him aware of the ins-and-outs of hunting and trapping policies, including Fish and Game's publication of trapping ethics, under its hunting regulations. According to Denney, this page suggests that trappers move their traps to "safer, less controversial areas" away from homes and recreational trails.

"It's already in the regulations as a code of ethics, but it's suggestive," Denney said. "So my suggestion is to make it regulative because trappers are obviously not taking it seriously."