Pet-lovers bare their teeth after Quebec man eats dog to survive
Some people are just damned stupid.
If I was in this mans situation I would do the same thing.
Pet-lovers bare their teeth after Quebec man eats dog to survive | National Post
The decision of lost Quebec outdoorsman Marco Lavoie to eat his German Shepherd may have saved his life.
Certainly, it’s earned the man the quiet praise of Canadian survival experts — even as dog lovers around the world branded him a heartless pariah.
“Never would I consider eating my pet,” reads a typical comment below a much-cited Daily Mail account of Mr. Lavoie’s ordeal.
Similar messages, many of them claiming they would “rather die” than eat a dog, blanketed blogs, forums and news websites from as far afield as Australia.
“They need to euthanize this guy for eating his dog,” said a caller to a Seattle radio show discussing Mr. Lavoie’s survival.
Nick Buck, chief survival instructor at B.C.’s Canadian Wilderness Tourism Training Centre, scoffed at the suggestion, saying it is “impossible to predict” how someone will react in an extreme situation, no matter their attachment to a canine companion.
“Anyone who says that they would not eat their dog is by extension saying that they value their dog’s life over their own. I find that offensive,” he wrote in an email to the National Post.
Paul Cobham, director of operations at Nova Scotia’s Survival School Canada, posited that Mr. Lavoie’s action was an “absolute last-resort” decision made in a haze of starvation and desperation.
“It’s almost one stage away from becoming a cannibal,” he said. “But nothing’s off the table when it comes to surviving.“
On Oct. 30, Mr. Lavoie was on the brink of death when he was pulled from the Northern Quebec wilderness by rescuers with the Sûreté du Québec.
He entered the Quebec Boreal Forest in June in a canoe trip up the Nottaway River with his dog, but became stranded in August when a bear attacked his campsite, destroying his food and much of his survival gear.
When he was reached by helicopter — his family finally contacted police in late October — Mr. Lavoie was barely able to speak, was suffering from hypothermia and had lost half his body weight.
Only after the badly injured man was safely in hospital did it emerge that in September, wounded from a fall, out of food and ammunition — and with freezing weather closing in — Mr. Lavoie had sacrificed his dog with a rock to the head.
“He is very ill and he can barely talk, but when our officers spoke to him in hospital the only thing he said was, ‘I want to get a new dog,’” the Sûreté’s Richard Carbonneu told a Mail reporter.
A friend later told the U.K. paper Mr. Lavoie had treated the dog “like one of his own children.”
Mr. Carbonneu added, “It is obvious he loved him very much and did not want to do what he did.”
‘It’s almost one stage away from becoming a cannibal’
In a Tuesday analysis for the webzine Slate, cultural historian Rebecca Onion compared the recent outrage against Mr. Lavoie to that of white people 100 years ago who sneered at desperate acts of dog-eating as the uncivilized practice of Aboriginal northerners.
“In the case of Marco Lavoie, we have years of stories telling us that we should starve rather than violate the man-dog bond,” she wrote.
Canadian history is filled with tales of desperate outdoorsmen who broke the man-dog bond. In 1952, lost Alberta trapper Jack Knox ate four huskies from his six-dog sledding team after he was stranded for more than a month.
Three years later, a Newfoundland-born Hudson’s Bay Company trader and his Inuit guide were forced to eat five of their 11-dog team after they got lost while mushing the 250 kilometres from Cape Dorset to what is now Iqaluit.
Some people are just damned stupid.
If I was in this mans situation I would do the same thing.
Pet-lovers bare their teeth after Quebec man eats dog to survive | National Post
The decision of lost Quebec outdoorsman Marco Lavoie to eat his German Shepherd may have saved his life.
Certainly, it’s earned the man the quiet praise of Canadian survival experts — even as dog lovers around the world branded him a heartless pariah.
“Never would I consider eating my pet,” reads a typical comment below a much-cited Daily Mail account of Mr. Lavoie’s ordeal.
Similar messages, many of them claiming they would “rather die” than eat a dog, blanketed blogs, forums and news websites from as far afield as Australia.
“They need to euthanize this guy for eating his dog,” said a caller to a Seattle radio show discussing Mr. Lavoie’s survival.
Nick Buck, chief survival instructor at B.C.’s Canadian Wilderness Tourism Training Centre, scoffed at the suggestion, saying it is “impossible to predict” how someone will react in an extreme situation, no matter their attachment to a canine companion.
“Anyone who says that they would not eat their dog is by extension saying that they value their dog’s life over their own. I find that offensive,” he wrote in an email to the National Post.
Paul Cobham, director of operations at Nova Scotia’s Survival School Canada, posited that Mr. Lavoie’s action was an “absolute last-resort” decision made in a haze of starvation and desperation.
“It’s almost one stage away from becoming a cannibal,” he said. “But nothing’s off the table when it comes to surviving.“
On Oct. 30, Mr. Lavoie was on the brink of death when he was pulled from the Northern Quebec wilderness by rescuers with the Sûreté du Québec.
He entered the Quebec Boreal Forest in June in a canoe trip up the Nottaway River with his dog, but became stranded in August when a bear attacked his campsite, destroying his food and much of his survival gear.
When he was reached by helicopter — his family finally contacted police in late October — Mr. Lavoie was barely able to speak, was suffering from hypothermia and had lost half his body weight.
Only after the badly injured man was safely in hospital did it emerge that in September, wounded from a fall, out of food and ammunition — and with freezing weather closing in — Mr. Lavoie had sacrificed his dog with a rock to the head.
“He is very ill and he can barely talk, but when our officers spoke to him in hospital the only thing he said was, ‘I want to get a new dog,’” the Sûreté’s Richard Carbonneu told a Mail reporter.
A friend later told the U.K. paper Mr. Lavoie had treated the dog “like one of his own children.”
Mr. Carbonneu added, “It is obvious he loved him very much and did not want to do what he did.”
‘It’s almost one stage away from becoming a cannibal’
In a Tuesday analysis for the webzine Slate, cultural historian Rebecca Onion compared the recent outrage against Mr. Lavoie to that of white people 100 years ago who sneered at desperate acts of dog-eating as the uncivilized practice of Aboriginal northerners.
“In the case of Marco Lavoie, we have years of stories telling us that we should starve rather than violate the man-dog bond,” she wrote.
Canadian history is filled with tales of desperate outdoorsmen who broke the man-dog bond. In 1952, lost Alberta trapper Jack Knox ate four huskies from his six-dog sledding team after he was stranded for more than a month.
Three years later, a Newfoundland-born Hudson’s Bay Company trader and his Inuit guide were forced to eat five of their 11-dog team after they got lost while mushing the 250 kilometres from Cape Dorset to what is now Iqaluit.
