Dr. Oakley, Yukon vet, ready for season 4 of National Geographic reality show
'We're really excited about how popular the show has become,' says Michelle Oakley about its worldwide reach
Yukon's famous animal doctor is gearing up for a fourth season of filming for the popular reality TV show Dr Oakley: Yukon Vet.
"We're really excited about how popular the show has become," Michelle Oakley said from her home in Haines Junction, where A New Day's Sandi Coleman caught up with her.
Yukon Vet airs on the National Geographic and has close to one million viewers a week. The show pegs Oakley as "the only all-species veterinarian for hundreds of square miles."
Oakley spoke about how she kept busy this winter — she said working with grad students doing lynx tracking and live capture research was a highlight — and what she hopes to do in season four.
"We'd love to get more of the Yukon farms," she said. The audience loves to see what a farm is like in the North she explains, because it's different than farming in the south.
She's also hoping to do more wildlife research work and continue her visits to the Yukon Wildlife Preserve outside of Whitehorse.
The show is about Oakley's work as a rural, travelling veterinarian, but also her family life. She admits that her husband and three daughters have mixed feelings about having a film crew invade their lives for a couple of months every year.
"It's probably hardest on the girls," she said.
Filming for the fourth season will start up in April, around the same time that the third season of the show airs in Canada.
Oakley said the show airs in more than 100 countries worldwide and she gets 10-15 emails a day from people interested in it. She's even fielded a phone call from a man in India who had a question about his pug (Oakley's family pug has appeared on the show).
She said although she couldn't provide veterinary advice over the phone, she enjoyed the interaction.
"It's fun to hear from people all over."
With files from A New Day.