Free vet service rattles Nunavut's only veterinary clinic

​Wedged in the doorway of the Abe Okpik community centre in Apex outside of Iqaluit, Cheeka the Chihuahua is being prepped to go under the knife.

Tables of medical supplies and dog crates fill the makeshift clinic as a team of veterinarians and their students from the Atlantic Veterinary College at the University of Prince Edward Island run a steady stream of spays and neuters for dozens of the city's dogs and cats, free of charge.

"It's been very busy," said Nicolle Davis, a veterinary student at the college. "We didn't know what to expect because it's our first time here."

Davis is one of four students to travel to Iqaluit to take part in The Chinook Project, a charity operating since 2005 to offer free services to northern Canadian communities that don't typically have access to vet care. 

The clinic expects to see around a hundred animals over the course of four-and-a-half days, the vast majority for spays and neuters. 

"This is more surgery than they would likely be exposed to in their entire year," said Dr. Marti Hopson, one of the three veterinarians who watch over the students as they practise their anesthetic and surgical skills. 

"It's an incredibly intense experience, working with people 18 hours a day in very stressful situations and yet we come together as a group, and there's nothing more beautiful than a team working together like that."

Hopson, along with the Iqaluit Humane Society, helped coordinate the trip, some two years in the making. 

In addition to spays and neuters, the project offers free vaccinations and checkups.

Jonathan Flaherty brought in Spike, his 12-year-old American bulldog.

"It's a great service they're doing," he said. 

"It's free, too."

Cancellations at NunaVet

And that's not sitting well with the territory's only animal clinic, just down the street from the Abe Okpik community centre. 

"For the project to do regular examinations and consults and stuff like that, that would have a detrimental impact on the company," said Duncan Cunningham, manager at the Nunavet Animal Clinic. 

This week, Cunningham said his clinic, which opened in 2011, had about 10 cancellations or no-shows. 

"I think that we can certainly get along with a group that's coming up here for the purposes of community health and reducing the dog population," he said. 

"But the actual vet having lost a bit of business in the last few days is a problem."

Janelle Kennedy, the president of the Iqaluit Humane Society, said it's not unusual for other SPCAs in southern Canadian communities to offer free services. She says the shelter has a mandate to help animals and while the free clinic is aimed at low-income families, no one is being turned away.

"To me it's a little bit of stretch to just say that because you had a cancellation, they're coming for a free service," said Kennedy. 

"If some people cancelled their appointments I really couldn't tell you if it had anything to do with us or not."

Kennedy said the humane society is using Iqaluit as a pilot project to see how the free clinic operates and hopes to potentially expand it to other Nunavut communities. 

"Our goal is to really help those low income families," said Heather Crowley, a board member with the humane society who helped organize Project Chinook.

​"They might have an animal they love and care deeply about. But they might say, you know, there's $500 — do I feed my family and pay rent, or do I take my dog and get surgery?"