Family dog's cyanide death highlights obscure government tool

An Idaho boy and his dog went on their daily walk up the steep hill behind their Pocatello home a year ago Friday.

Canyon Mansfield did his homework on this hill just east of town. Precisely 354 yards from the family swing set, the hill was home, and he and the 3-year-old yellow lab, Kasey, knew it like the pages of a well-worn book.

On this day, March 16, 2017, as he chucked a toy for the family's trained hunting dog, he noticed something he hadn't seen before. The teenager didn't know it, but he'd stumbled upon an M-44, a spring-loaded device packed with sodium cyanide powder. The U.S. Department of Agriculture produces the devices, which are used to kill thousands of coyotes, foxes and other canids in 15 states.

Canyon couldn't know the poison is made by the federal government in a warehouse 8 miles from his home, then distributed nationwide. He couldn't know a bill in Congress would eventually bear his name and he'd travel to Washington, D.C., and hold a news conference as the youthful face of the latest effort to ban the devices.

But in a flash of white powder that day, a beloved dog was dead, Canyon was exposed to cyanide and the Mansfield family was thrust into a small community of people forced to learn about the obscure government tool. Officials say the M-44 is an effective way of helping farmers and ranchers manage damaging predators, but longtime critics -- including Eugene nonprofit leader Brooks Fahy and Oregon U.S. Rep. Peter DeFazio -- say it is a ticking time bomb that could've killed Canyon that day.

"I've said it's only a matter of time until a child is killed," DeFazio, a Eugene Democrat, said in a June news conference in Washington, D.C. "And we came awfully, awfully close in this instance, and it is still only a matter of time unless we get these things out of the environment."

APOLITICAL TO ACTIVISTS

Kasey's death marked a grim punctuation mark in a string of high-profile incidents last winter that vaulted the M-44 into national relevance for the first time in a decade. First, a protected gray wolf was killed by an M-44 in Wallowa County. Then two dogs were killed in Wyoming.

Then, Canyon and Kasey.

Canyon spotted the foreign object, not unlike a sprinkler head, emerging from the ground with a gooey substance and a protruding spring. He touched the spring and the M-44 ejected a toxic powder upward. His arm was in front of his face, and his wrist deflected the blast and prevented him from ingesting a large amount. The powder, which turns into hydrogen cyanide gas when it meets moisture, blasted Kasey in the mouth.

The 90-pound dog died a wretched death on the hill, and Canyon, a wrestler who weighs about 100 pounds, coped with intense headaches and a numbing sensation in his hands for weeks.

The largely apolitical family would spend the next year advocating for national legislation amid a chaotic new administration where gaining traction on controversial issues was difficult.

The day after Kasey's death, the family got a call from an Oregon area code. The caller had information and a sympathetic disposition.

Canyon's dad, Mark Mansfield, thought, lo and behold, here's somebody who knows all about this thing that killed their dog.

GRIEF COUNSELOR

Brooks Fahy estimates he's made well over 100 calls similar to the one he made to the Mansfields during his 28 years leading the small nonprofit advocacy group Predator Defense. His nonprofit's mission is to argue predators and people can live together and that trapping, shooting and poisoning coyotes, wolves, cougars and other predators isn't necessary or scientifically prudent.

Fahy has devoted much of his adult life to banning M-44s, which he describes as "indiscriminate killers." He produced a documentary called "Exposed: USDA's Secret War on Wildlife," examining the devices and the government agency that manufactures them. He's holding a screening Thursday in Pocatello along with the Mansfield family.

But while Fahy has made connections with other people who've lost pets or been exposed to M-44s, he'd rarely grown as close to a family as he would with the Mansfields.

He also saw a chance to pass federal legislation.

With a series of national headlines about the wolf and Kasey's death, he felt momentum. Stories appeared in the National Geographic and The Washington Post. His life's work seemed attainable.

"The Mansfields are Republicans. They have stature in the community," he said, "Mark's an MD. They're like this idyllic family."

DeFazio, a Democrat representing Oregon's 4^th congressional district, has known Fahy for at least 20 years and has sponsored federal legislation to ban the chemical compound.

He said he's seen Fahy help people like the Mansfields deal with trauma. "He's got a warm personality, and he gives them basically something to do," he said, citing Fahy's calls to ban the devices nationally, "which is a way to get toward closure."

After an incident like the Mansfields experienced, Fahy swoops in with understated knowledge and shared rage.

"He's horrified, and he truly hurts for the loss of your animal," Mansfield said.

Theresa Mansfield, a self-described sharp-tongued mother of three who was the only one home that day with her youngest, Canyon, likened Fahy to a counselor.

"He will be my friend forever," she said in an interview last year, "even if we don't always agree on things."

Both parties agree it's an unlikely pairing: small-town Idaho Republicans and  a  Eugene liberal.

Theresa Mansfield said she at times almost let anger overcome her. She lost faith in the government. She found herself screaming at a stranger at a Boise wrestling tournament when he insinuated Canyon had cursed during a competition.

She showed up at the doorsteps of the U.S. Department of Agriculture facility in town with Canyon's cyanide-laced clothes in a garbage bag.

"It hits me hard," she said of Kasey's death. But she knows it hits Canyon, now 15-years-old, harder.

A few weeks after the incident, DeFazio reintroduced legislation to ban the substance.

The bill became the outlet to funnel the rage. "They've become activists, and I think a lot of it has to do with the fact that they're very religious," Fahy said, pointing to the family's moral compass. "It's something they can't turn away from."

Mark Mansfield said the family is blessed to be able to pay for Canyon's more than $5,000 in medical bills out of pocket and still have the financial resources to advocate and travel to press lawmakers in person.

In June, the family and Fahy stood outside the  U.S. Capitol alongside DeFazio.

Canyon, Mark and the couple's eldest, Hunter, wore Labrador-themed neckties.

Fahy, who was undergoing radiation for prostate cancer, almost didn't make the trip.

But it was the first time the friends had met in person.

They embraced. "I felt like we'd known each other for years," Mark Mansfield said.

Mansfield had picked his spots in the months before, offering medical support to Fahy via text. On this trip, he tried to prop up Fahy when he was too fatigued, as the family visited lawmakers and lobbied for the bill during a long day.

Mansfield went to Washington thinking there was a 10 percent chance of passing a bill. "I left with 90 percent chance," he said in an interview last summer. He attributed that to Fahy, DeFazio and his staff.

Mansfield called DeFazio a great guy, and he lamented the lack of support from Idaho Republicans. "He never asked me my politics," Mansfield said of DeFazio, "because it's not a political issue."

OPTIMISM WANES

By the time Congress recessed for the Christmas holiday, that optimism had been bludgeoned by political reality.

Sex scandals, healthcare and tax reform legislation, a brewing crisis with North Korea. Mansfield said there was always something happening to distract from the bill.

But by the end of 2017, DeFazio had attracted 15 co-sponsors, with the lone Republican being Rep. Matt Gaetz of Florida. And on the state level, the family watched as small successes seemed to take hold.

The federal wildlife services agency "ceased all use of M-44 devices" on private and public land in Idaho and removed all devices deployed there. M-44s will not be used in Idaho this year," a spokeswoman said in a statement.

Six rural Oregon counties ceased using M-44s after the wolf death and a subsequent effort in the Legislature stripped state funding for the controversial management tool. But opponents say the federal agency, which receives its funding from the state and counties, is simply dipping into other sources to pay for M-44s in Oregon's other counties.

Eighteen conservation groups are still waiting to hear from the Environmental Protection Agency on a formal petition filed last year to outlaw the chemical compound.

The federal agency conducted a national review of its M-44 practices and issued a new advisory outlining best practices. But the agency plans to start using M-44s again once a new label for the chemical compound is finalized.

But the family is still pushing for more. Fahy "let us know early on that this was a marathon, not a sprint," Mansfield said.

Fahy, who said his cancer is now in remission, said he has no plans to stop fighting, either. "We're not going anywhere. We're not backing down, and neither are the Mansfields."

BACK TO THE HILL

But that optimism is still tinged with cynicism.

Canyon has learned a real-life lesson in government inaction, the family said.

He's already considering a career in politics. He was elected president of his freshman class.

Theresa Mansfield said it's difficult seeing legislators the family knows socially fail to take any action to prevent tragedies.

"It's beyond politics," she said, "It's beyond saving a sheep," she said, citing predator control arguments, "when there's a kid involved."

One year after the incident, the family has a new dog, Rambo.

The new black lab isn't a well-trained hunting companion, like Kasey was. He doesn't go up the hill as much. But at home, Rambo is a center of attention.

He sleeps with Canyon or Mom and Dad.

"He's healed us," she said.

They look back at photos of Canyon after the cyanide exposure and are stunned by the intensity of it. Mark Mansfield remembered learning about cyanide during college, but he still struggles to believe his youngest son was exposed to the poison.

Canyon doesn't go up the hill as much these days. He is worried there are more M-44s despite assurances they were removed.

"Well how do you know, dad," the teenager says. "You didn't know about the last one, and there were two."

But Mark Mansfield pushes his son to walk up the hill.

They walk right up there. They stand on the spot where their beloved dog died, and they talk about it.

It still hurts.

-- Andrew Theen
atheen@oregonian.com
503-294-4026
@andrewtheen