Dog gets stitched up at local hospital in Watson Lake, Yukon, after being impaled by stick

A dog in Watson Lake, Yukon, is on the mend after being impaled by a stick while out on a walk, and then getting emergency treatment from a physician at the local hospital.

"I'm just very grateful for the medical staff in Watson Lake," said the dog's owner, Debbie Chadwick, after the ordeal.

Chadwick said she was out for a casual walk with her nine-year-old dog Kallie last Sunday when the animal somehow injured itself while running through the bushes.

"She got herself out and she walked back and she was bleeding," Chadwick recounts. "I felt under her chest and I could feel that there was something under her chest."

It was a five-centimetre piece of the stick that had broken off and was stuck in Kallie.

Chadwick's friend Cedric Jobe helped remove the protruding stick before running to get the truck to bring the injured animal to the Watson Lake Community Hospital.

There's no veterinary clinic in the community of about 1,500 people. Chadwick said the closest one is almost five hours away, in Whitehorse.

She says that means many Watson Lake residents have taken their pets to the local hospital for an immediate assessment, or treatment.

Once they got to the hospital that day, Chadwick said the medical staff there were more than happy to help. The physician on call arrived in minutes to have a look at the dog.

"We found she had a hole about the size of a dime in her chest and he ended up stitching her up," Chadwick said. 

Jobe stayed with Chadwick throughout the whole ordeal. He said he's lived in many places across Canada and nowhere has he seen the type of community-mindedness he saw from the local medical staff.

"I've lived in Toronto. I've lived in Calgary. And you would never get that service there at the hospital — ever," Jobe said. "They'd just send you off to the vet regardless if it was open or closed, or what. In smaller communities like this, everybody seems willing to help.

"To go the extra mile to help people with their pets, that is really big here. It speaks volumes for the mentality of the way people think in smaller communities compared to big cities."

Dr. Haroon Mian was the on-call physician who tended to Kallie's wound that day. He said coming from Toronto, he never imagined he would ever be stitching up a dog in the small town of Watson Lake. 

"I didn't expect this is what I'd be doing," Mian laughed. "But honestly I'm glad the outcome was positive."

Mian said the best thing to do in the event of a pet emergency is to bring the animal to a veterinary clinic as they are best equipped and trained to handle those situations. But he understands that in a small and remote community with limited resources, it's sometimes not that easy for people.

"We will always try to prioritize the community," Mian said. "I know it sounds odd. It sounds unique from a big city perspective.

"If I said this in a Toronto hospital they would go crazy — but the reality is, in a community hospital we do what the community needs."