Volunteering in the Canadian Arctic - Days 6-8

Our volunteer trip has come to an end. There is no better person to interview than Samantha, Executive Director of the Iqlauit Animal Hospital and Nunavut Rescue.
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Listener questions, episode suggestions, or if you have a good idea for a guest, email me at dr.redford@vet905.com
Additional information can be found at drcliff.ca

Transcript

Dr. Cliff Redford (00:00)
Hey, good morning everyone. This is the last Ecaloet special episode. And I do have to apologize for those who've been listening every single day. You'll notice that I skipped the last couple of days. I've been doing updates every night. The last two days, because it was our last two days, we're incredibly busy. I think we did four and five surgeries respectively on day whatever and whatever. We stayed up late.

maybe celebrated a little bit with a little bit of beer at the brewery, got our asses kicked at the trivia thing again. However, cannelloni and cannolis are not the same thing. So we got scammed. But here we go. I've left the, maybe not the best guest for last, but definitely the most appropriate considering this is the end of our little Akalawit volunteer trip.

So everyone say hello to Samantha. Say hi to Samantha. Hello everybody. Yeah, nice having you. Tell us who you are, what you do, your favorite color. Well, my favorite color is teal, which you guys can't tell, but Dr. Cliff Ken sitting across from me with my teal hair all the time. That is how cold it is in the Cali. Exactly. hair turns cyanotic. I am the executive director for Nunavut Animal Rescue.

And None of an Animal Rescue is the rescue that owns a Calloway Animal Hospital and has started this whole venture that we've dragged Dr. Cliff into. And so I am the one that tries to convince doctors like Dr. Cliff to come up and work for us and volunteer their time to help us out and rescue dogs and take puppies home and all the fun stuff. You've treated us very well here. It was a good trip last year, but it was I did not realize it was the very first

clinic, I guess, when Nunavut Rescue took over the animal hospital. wasn't the first clinic, but it was the first clinic that I wasn't here for. okay, so that's part of it. And it was Trevor's first. Yeah, was Trevor's first clinic. And it was one of the first bigger clinics that we did. Right, whereas here, and last year was amazing. We had a blast. I've talked about it many times on this podcast. But, you know, this time you brought us food.

And I mean, that's the big thing. That's the big thing. mean, the way to a person's is food, right? That's right. Yes. And veterinarians and their team are no different. You got us a nice, nice vehicle to drive, which I drove off the road. And then Brandon got stuck when he went up the road to nowhere. I don't think his Quincy thing worked out. did not work out. He could not find it.

No, but then he went back. Like, he built another one. did he go build another one? Yeah, he built another one right off the road to nowhere. Right up against a rock that is already, the snow was already there. so he went back last night on his own. Like, he walked there instead. And I was like, all right, I guess that's fine. If he wasn't an adult, I would totally be arrested for, you know, not providing the necessities of life.

Whereas here, I bet you it's not unusual for a 16 year old to camp out on their own. But my understanding is he stayed out there, built it, got in there and it just wasn't warm enough maybe. I think he's still sleeping in the warm apartment now. But he got stuck in the snow. But he didn't go off the road at least. He didn't go off the road, he just got stuck in a little bit of a drift. Yeah, in a road that leads to nowhere that doesn't have...

plowing, but how did you get in? How long have you been with Nunavut Rescue and how did you get into this? So I've been with Nunavut Rescue for two years. The president of Nunavut Rescue actually kind of poached me. I was working for a hotel here in a Calout and I was volunteering for the rescue. I'd fostered a couple animals and she kind of just kept bugging me being like, if you don't want to work for the hotel we're looking for people. She got to know me a little bit and so she kind of just kept putting it up and putting up and then I...

did end up leaving my job at the hotel and she was like, well, come work for me. And so I came and I started in this building we're in. was just doing, I was painting and I was helping with construction and doing inventory on all these. We had a room full of vet supplies that I didn't know anything about because I'd never worked in the vet industry. And I was going through with another volunteer and we inventoried everything and I had to Google a whole lot of stuff to be like, what is this?

and all the surgical equipment trying to figure out what it all was. And it was a whirlwind. And then we decided, we knew, had bought this building with the intention of having vets come up and starting the vet clinic. So I started just with the rescue side. was taking care of puppies. I was living in the apartment. I was fostering puppies in the apartment. And then we knew we were having a vet team come up. our first vet came up. She taught me a lot while she was here.

showed me lot of what things were, how we should get everything set up. She wasn't doing surgery, she was just here for general exams. And then yeah, I've just continued on. On from there. What is the, how would you compare the difference between working in hotel services and this?

The people are equally challenging. the people are the same. Doesn't matter what industry you're in. The people are always the same. This one has the perks of I get to cuddle puppies, which makes it way better. Which is 100 % why I'm a veterinarian and not a human Exactly. Right? I don't get in trouble when I kiss my patients. Your patients are all forgiving. Doesn't matter what you do with them. Most of the time they're just...

Yeah, it's it's yeah, it's pretty nice. mean snowy who we spayed four days ago, maybe yep You know she came running up to me this morning Outside when she was going for a walk. I wouldn't say running because she was on a leash She was know properly being cared for she just did have a major surgery, but she's like I remember you I love you They all love us so so quickly which is which is kind of cool

But wow, you didn't have any experience. Talk about trial by fire. Yeah, I'd had experience with dogs before I'd worked at like dog boarding facilities and things like that. I knew animals, but yeah, vet stuff I did not know any of it. I have learned a lot in last two years. Yeah, good stuff. You're gonna be up. Did you grow up here? No. So where are from? I'm from Ontario. Okay. I'm from Warfarin. sorry, we talked about Scarborough. Yeah.

I moved up here during COVID because I lost I was working in hospitality lost my job as we do in during COVID and my brother had already moved up here for a job and knew that there was a hotel hiring a couple hotels hiring so he said why don't you just apply for a job up here. That's right your brother was the guy running the trivia thing yesterday. scammed us. I think he did it because you're on our team. Maybe. Quite possibly. Quite possibly. The question was it was the food

five food questions and we had selected that as our sort of air quotes specialty so we're gonna get double points. if you need to get it that's cool.

I know who it is. All right. Hey, we do that too. I can always pause this at any time. It's super easy. But the question was, you know, kind of name the traditional Italian meal that consists of pasta rolled into tubes, stuffed with ingredients and baked and usually served with a sauce or something like that. So clearly, cannelloni.

and the other team wrote cannoli. Now spelling is not like you can misspell. Yes. And if there was my argument would be if there's not a food called cannoli then you could say okay you meant cannelloni but there's clearly a food called cannoli that's Italian that's tubular but not pasta not with a red sauce.

Completely different part of the meal, not a main dish, it is a dessert, but they gave it to them and that knocked us out of second last place. we could have been in second to last and instead we were last. instead we were last. We were doing really well until it got to the paintings. We had to name the paintings, but. I better answer this one.

Very nice, work never stops. And yeah, we're here at the animal hospital. It's our last day in a Calowet, but yesterday was our last clinical day. So we came in and the non-exciting work is calling people back regarding blood results, which Arthur's doing, and then dealing with controlled drug logs and paperwork, which Arthur and you are doing.

And then setting up stuff, we're taking some samples back, some biopsies and stuff like that that we did that you and Arthur are dealing with. So the trend is veterinarians don't do a lot. We said, I was planning on my little mind teaser games on LinkedIn. I got to keep my brain fresh. But yeah, so we got, we got screwed out of that, but we're all pretty competitive. But it was a really good time. New Brew N-U-B-R-E-W is the brewery up here and it's.

Maybe the most northern brewery? In the most northern brewery. In the world? Not in the world, but in North America. In North America, okay. Because like Norway or Greenland. Yeah, there's one on that tiny little island that is dark all around this time of year that's owned by Norway, but you don't need visas to go there. Really? Svalbard? We're gonna have to check that out. My dad listens to this podcast regularly and he likes to...

said us tidbits of info that we didn't know. So dad, you gotta figure that one out. I think there's also one that's in Russia. So there's not a brewery in northern Alaska? Like isn't Alaska more this far. Some of northern Alaska is, but there isn't one this high up. Really? Interesting. It's a really cool brewery. We had a great time, regardless of the outcome. Yeah, so this has been a great trip.

We got so much done. It is so helpful having you and Di came up or down or over. She's from Alberta. she's a vet tech assistant by sort of trade, I guess. But really she's a vet tech. I mean, she's thrown in catheters and pulling blood in a whole bit. And she's been doing this quite a bit. She comes up pretty much for all of them. She previously did work for Nunavet, the vet clinic here before us.

Yeah, yeah, and when did that vet leave? So they left 2022 was their last they did have some client like they were taking some clients I don't think they were doing surgery at that point. Okay. Okay, so not too far. not too long ago. We bought they didn't have permanent vets at that point They were doing very similar to what we're doing. They just had vets coming up As much as they could get them and then they closed down because they couldn't they just couldn't find the vets. could do it regularly right right, right

Well, when was the last time they had a vet here permanent? Permanently, I think the last vet was here 2020. Okay, that's what I'm thinking of. And is this, is that the same person who owned it up to 2022? So it was the same person who owned it, but it was a different vet. The person who owns it wasn't the vet. But yeah, they owned it up until 2022 and they were trying to bring up vets coming in, but just had a hard time. Janelle recently asked me...

Is Janelle the one who poached you from the yeah. Yeah. Yeah, so she's the president I guess or or helped found found and fund probably this place And she had reached out to me last year, which is how I started coming up But she just reached out to me a couple of days ago, you know thanking us and wow time has gone by so fast, etc, etc and She asked me what do you think it would take? salary wise to get someone interested in being here full-time and

I've had a few people not associated with Janelle ask me if can the community support, meaning are there enough pets? The answer is absolutely. And there's definitely a need. A vet could easily be working full time four days a week, which is what most of them work these days. That's a bit of a bitter point for me. But my boss is nasty. He makes me work six days a week.

which is the man in the mirror. But, so there's clearly a push. And I think a lot of that has to do with you guys formally taking over this place and then the work that you've been doing. we got another vet coming up in six weeks. And then there's a locum vet who's contemplating coming up for six weeks straight. Like that's fantastic.

Yeah, Janelle was asking about, and so for any vets listening, or future vets or whatever, I mean not only a good salary but accommodations provided and etc etc. So you know, you could have a good time, have a good life, cash, make some money, put it in your pocket, not have the expenses necessarily that you would have and what a great opportunity. And I mean, I don't want to poach you.

I'm great with my team back home. Hi guys, for those that listen. We're gonna be home soon. The cat will be home soon, the mice have to stop playing. But like if you're ever moving, if you're ever going back south and you were crazy enough to stay in the animal care business, I mean you got this great resume now and great experience and...

Use me and everyone else as a reference. It'll be so huge. You could literally just, you you call us and Dr. Michelle and et cetera, et cetera. And we just call clinics and just say, look, do yourself a favor, hire this person. And when you do, you owe me a bottle of wine. I've had a few people move and that's how I kind of got them. The reference letter was just like, you know, I could tell you about how great this person is, et cetera, et cetera. I'm just going to tell you, you'd be crazy not to hire this person.

And usually the vet will respond and say, you know, that's what did it. Like, I've just heard so many reference letters that are, you know, the typical how wonderful person is and that's great. But when someone basically calls me out for my insanity, if I don't hire this person, and I got it. Yeah, it's going to work because, you know, we all just want someone who's, who's hardworking and passionate and not a pain in the butt. And you are all of those.

Thank you, I appreciate it. That one time you were suffering from a migraine and taking a few hours off. It definitely didn't run as smoothly here. We're just like, what the hell? Everyone did a great job. Kristen sat behind the desk, but we're just like, what is going on? But it was a good time. Yeah, it was a good time. What would you say, what's your most memorable case? Not during this week, I mean, unless it is this week.

but like you've probably had some pretty just life-changing rescues or pretty fantastic scenarios. Yeah, we've had a lot of really good rescues and I think those are always my favorite cases because like we are a rescue organization that is running the vet clinic and that's one of things that I love most about this vet clinic is that I can offer the people who can't afford it and can't get the services they need, we can offer them and get them.

the help that they need. And then all the rescue dogs, when we have rescue dogs, we can get them all the care they need. Most memorable one? I'm trying to think. Honestly, probably you've met her beauty. She is here. She came in a year ago, last September. So she came in September of 2023. She was one of the very first, the very first clinic I ran with Michelle, who you've talked to, who's our remote vet. She's come up multiple times.

She was one of our first patients that we had in. She came in with nine puppies and her owner's mother had brought her in because she had unfortunately been abandoned and wasn't getting fed, wasn't getting the water and she looked like she had mane. She had no fur on her body. She weighed about 17 kilograms. She was nothing like she looks today. And so I've been working with her throughout the last year and a half.

The owners did take care of her and they put her on medications. We helped them with paying for the medications. We got her spayed. We got all the medical care she needed. And they did a very fantastic job of getting her to where she is, but they did make the tough decision to surrender her just because they couldn't provide her with the care she needed, which was very hard on them, but it was.

Nice that we knew that she wasn't getting the care she needed and we can now provide that and we are getting her adopted soon. She is going to Newfoundland. She's a cutie. going to her forever home but I think that's my most rewarding case just because I've seen it from start to finish. I know everything that this dog has gone through. She is a wonderful dog. She doesn't like other dogs but she loves people, loves all the attention in the world, just wants to sit on a couch and cuddle everybody. Yeah, yeah she's a sweetie. And I think that's probably my most like...

rewarding. I've seen a lot of fun things. I've seen like a lot of things that I didn't ever think I would ever see because I didn't expect to be in the vet area. But I think that's probably my most rewarding is just seeing her transformation and going from start to finish. So how do you like how do you reach out to these? Is it other rescues that you work with you know in other provinces and territories? so we do a lot of outreach. Our main

that we work with for all of our rescue dogs is called Sashmar Paws Helping Northern Dogs. And so this is a wonderful lady, her name is Karen. She runs the whole rescue and she doesn't take in dogs herself, but she is our go-to. So we say, hey, I have this dog. Her name is Pink, for instance. This is, we give a description of the dog, her age, if we've got her spayed, all that stuff. And we give it all to her and she reaches out to all the rescues in Ottawa area.

And sometimes in Toronto, she sent dogs to Toronto for us all over the place. In Northern Ontario, she works with a lot of different rescues. And so she is our man on the ground in Ontario. And she passes the information along to rescues, works her ass off to convince them to take rescue dogs from us and help us find them homes. Because in reality, the rescue dogs that we get for none of an animal rescue, we will only be able to place maybe about

15 % of them here in a callowit or in Nunavut in general. Because there's a large population of stray loose dogs and there's not that many people here. So most of them will not find homes here, but we do want to find them home. So she works her butt off and she finds them rescue placements in Ontario. And then we send them down. She's the one that goes to the airport, picks them up, makes sure they get to the rescue, makes sure that all the transport goes well.

If they're going to Toronto, she sets up transport to get them from the airport, usually in a foster overnight in Ottawa and then driven to Toronto the next day. Every once in a while we fly dogs to Toronto. It's very big undertaking and we definitely could not do it without her. She's an amazing rescue. She does a lot of work for us. And then we also work with other rescues and vets when they come up. think we have only ever had one vet team that's come up so far that has not gone home with at least one dog.

Whether it's a medical case that they're taking home and taking on or if it's a dog that they've rescued or a dog that they're taking home for a friend to adopt. And we of course do all the vetting and everything like that beforehand but yeah I think we've only had or had one vet team that didn't go home with an animal. Yeah I mean we love what we do right and we get I mean I had no people who know they listen to this podcast I ended up adopting Lana who we then

kind of changed her name to Poppy. There's a story behind that which I won't bore you with. But we did adopt her and she's now in the Redford Choo-Coo-Boo-Doo family. We love her very much. We also took home Lenny. Lenny was adopted by a technician. I never planned on adopting Poppy. I am very good at caring for and loving these pets but not getting attached.

You know, so she just stayed with us for a couple of weeks because she had her health issues. And then slowly, slowly things started to happen. Now I purposely did not ask my wife. She doesn't listen to the podcast. So she's not going to hear this, but I did not ask her to adopt the dog. I didn't want to be that cause she'd say yes. Right. But we already had a dog. Poppy was going to be a shedder, which she is nothing crazy, but she does shed a little bit. And for some people that's important and that's fine.

Um, and I did not want to be the guy to say, we keep this dog? And then she'd say yes. And then maybe down the road, be like, yeah, this is your dog. Um, and in fact, several times she was like, if you want to adopt, if you want us to adopt her, we can adopt her. I'm like, no, it's okay. Um, you know, like if let's just focus on her care. And I was, I was true to that. Like if, if we never adopted her, I would have been okay. You know, like I would have been sad for a day or two and that's it.

But then one day she said, you know what, I'd really like to keep her. But we gotta change her name. I can't call her reverse anal, Lana. That's the story because of her prolapsed rectum. So she's our little popcorn puppy. And she's a savage. She's crazy, but she's awesome. We love her. So I'm taking these seven puppies home. And I think the only problem I'm gonna have is helping everyone select who's gonna adopt them because...

We got this radio interview coming up. We got an article on Toronto Star. Now I'm gonna be on with, everyone's like, please bring the puppies. Breakfast television, the social, morning show, et cetera, et cetera. And there's only seven of them. And I already know a couple of clients who are asking. So I think we are gonna need to sort of figure out a way of, hey, these seven have homes now.

But I can get you other puppies. We can get more. We have a lot of puppies. Yeah, think I might be working with that colleague that you talked about in Ottawa. Maybe one day, you know, very soon another litter comes down, know, fosters somebody overnight and then I could come on a Sunday or something and drive them back or I don't know, we'll figure it out. But I won't do another Red Bull through the night. That's going to take a year off my life, I think, but it'll be worth it.

This has been a fantastic trip We love the Cali. We recommend everyone come up here and and visit more likely in the summer And definitely veterinarians can come at any time But it sounds like slowly slowly you're getting more and more vets Which is fantastic hopefully one day we'll just have a vet that just wants to come and be permanent vet even if it's only for a year Just just a vet. Yeah, imagine the work that you could do like What a great

What a great experience and you know, heaven forbid we want to help animals when they need it. So there you go. Perfect. We should do this again in the sense of I can always do a Zoom podcast like every six months or something. We could keep in touch and kind of go from there, but I will sign off and anything you want to add. How can people like follow you guys, support you guys? Yeah, so they can follow us. We do have Instagram and Facebook, which is known about Animal Rescue.

And they can follow along. We do post stories of the dogs that we've gotten rescued, different things like that. You're a registered charity so people can donations. charity so they can always do donations. Canada helps is a great one for donations. I know you have a GoFundMe going right now as well. And we are always looking for donations. We're also always looking for donations of dog food because we have a lot of dogs to feed. Yeah, yeah. We have an Amazon wish list.

and we're always looking for donations. so they can go onto your Amazon wishlist and I can do the link on, there'll be links on the podcast, little sort of info paragraph at the bottom and they would buy that stuff through Amazon and then Amazon ships it here. Yep, they just ship it to Notavid Animal Rescue. comes, the post office delivers it right to our door usually and then we can feed puppies for another week. Wow, it's like a real city here. Excellent. Everyone, thanks for listening.

Be kind to animals, be kind to your local animal rescues and give Nunavut Animal Hospital a ring and support them as best you can. Wonderful. Thanks for having me. Cheers.