How to Save a Life

November 21, 2012

Students in the class of AVC 2013, travelled to Hopedale as participants on the Chinook Project. As part of the experience, the students craft various pieces of writing. This anonymous essay was submitted without photos, photos are included of other Chinook Project trips in other locations. Note: animal rescue and removing animals from Northern Communities is an extremely complicated issue. The Chinook Project supports animals remaining in communities when possible and focuses on One Health principles.

When planning on visiting Hopedale, Labrador with the Chinook project this year, we discussed the types of tasks we would be carrying out, including elective spay and neuter surgeries, and providing routine veterinary care such as vaccinations and physical examinations. I knew we would be meeting a large number of dogs, a fewer number of cats, and their respective owners. We would encounter people and their pets in a variety of situations, from the littlest lap dog whose feet rarely touch the ground to the largest husky who has never known the inside of a house. I even suspected that we may be asked to perform euthanasias, whether for humane, medical reasons or for population control. What I hadn’t given much thought to was the team of life savers we would be joining, the impact we would make on the lives of a number of cats and dogs, and how much this trip would alter what I knew about how to save a life. 

Upon arrival in Hopedale, one of our first clients told us their dog had accidentally gotten pregnant, and she now is looking after her eleven young puppies. Not knowing anyone who could take in one puppy, let alone eleven, and knowing that her family was going to be away from home the following week, she felt stuck having no one to look after the puppies, or a long term plan for their future. With the Chinook project coming to Hopedale, she felt her only choice was to ask us to euthanize the puppies. We learned this the first day we arrived, which immediately caused a dark cloud to move into our otherwise brilliant Northern skies. The knowledge that, by the end of the week, we may be euthanizing eleven gorgeous, healthy puppies caused heavy hearts among our Chinook team. We had all, at one time or another, had the displeasure of participating in or performing an unnecessary euthanasia, but those memories did nothing to make this expected task any easier.

A few days into our clinic, we were seeing a young female cat for a health check and spay surgery. We were told she had a litter of young kittens at home, and her owner did not know what to do with them. Cats in Hopedale were by far a less popular pet than dogs, and there was no interest from anyone in the community wishing to adopt a kitten or two. We were asked if we would be able to euthanize them. While dropping off the cat after her surgery, we made a house visit to see the kittens, who couldn’t have been more than a week old. There were two litters of kittens in the house, with both mother cats sharing the work of raising the kittens. The sight of the other cat, watching over her own babies and those of our patient, was an inspiring one. No amount of mental preparation could have made me okay with the thought of taking those innocent lives.  

The saying “it takes a village” applies to a lot more than child rearing. The simple answer to the overpopulation problem we were faced with would have been to euthanize those young animals. But the community of Hopedale and surrounding areas had other plans. News of the pups in need travelled to RCMP officers in Newfoundland, who arranged to fly all eleven puppies to Newfoundland where their chances of being adopted were significantly greater. One of the community organizers of our visit to Hopedale arranged for the kittens, once they were old enough, to be flown to another Northern Labrador community, where cats were more readily accepted as pets. Through what felt like very little effort on our part, but an enormous labor of love from those involved, the lives of twenty innocent puppies and kitties had been spared.

A month after our time in Labrador, national media was abuzz with news of a rescue group in Nova Scotia teaming up with a courier giant in order to ship dozens of unwanted puppies from Goose Bay and Natuashish, Labrador, to Nova Scotia for adoption. The Happy Valley-Goose Bay SPCA was at capacity, which is not difficult to reach considering the cramped quarters of the small Labrador animal shelter. Sixty dogs were in need of transportation. Animal rescue workers in Nova Scotia reached out, with their pleas being answered by the courier service, who donated a plane and their time to deliver the puppies to Nova Scotia, where they would have a far better chance of finding homes. 

In veterinary school we learn how to save lives through medical and surgical interventions. During my time with the Chinook Project in Hopedale, I learned how to save a life in a completely different way, one that cannot be taught through lectures or textbooks. I learned how to save a life through the love, strength and determination of people who care.