Marco Lavoie – Forced to eat the dog that saved his life

Time stranded: 3 months

Distance traveled: Under 100 miles

Terrain types: Forest and river

Deaths: 1

Situation ended: Found by rescue team

Location: Nottaway River, Quebec

Marco Lavoie was very experienced when it came to the great outdoors, and he loved nothing more than to go into the wilderness to get away from city life and spend some time with nature. On one of his trips he decided to go to Nottaway River about 500 miles north of Montreal with his canoe and his faithful German Shepherd. The plan was to spend two months in the region camping along the banks of the river and seeing the sights of such a remote and untouched landscape.

He arrived safely at his planned starting point and began to paddle up river with his dog, making camp where ever he felt like. Within the first few days he made a number of stops and set up camp, and on one of these occasions a hungry bear must have smelt his food supply and came charging out the trees towards his canoe. Since Lavoie was taken by surprise and he was already standing next to his canoe, the bear saw him as a threat and attacked.

It made short work of Lavoie, badly mauling him and then turning to his food supply in the canoe. The bear ate or destroyed his entire food supply in seconds before once again turning its attention to Lavoie. His faithful German shepherd was in the woods at this point but must have heard the attack, because as the bear charged for Lavoie a second time, his dog charged out the trees and went straight for the bear, scaring it off and saving the life of his master.

Lavoie was badly bruised but had no life threatening wounds, and with the bear gone his biggest problem was now having nothing to eat in the middle of no where. For the next couple of days he searched for food but found nothing, and on the third day he was so hungry he made the heartbreaking decision to eat his dog. He knew that even if he found something small to eat it would still be days or even weeks before he could get back to civilization and knew he needed something substantial. He killed his dog by hitting it over the head with a rock and immediately butchered and cooked some of the meat.

The dog alone wasn’t enough to last, and he spent the next few weeks trying to ration the meat while looking for extra food in the wilderness. For whatever reason he wasn’t able to find any food in the wild, and knowing that his family wouldn’t raise the alarm until after his planned two months were up also added to his fears of starving to death.

For the next few weeks Lavoie stumbled through the wilderness looking for food and rescue, but found next to nothing to eat. After the two months were up his family raised the alarm, already concerned he hadn’t checking in with them during the trip. A search party was formed but during the first couple of weeks found no sign of Lavoie, and fearing it was already to late the rescue operation was scaled down. It wasn’t until a search helicopter was making a random pass of the area that it saw Lavoie limping along.

He was picked up and taken to a hospital in north-west Quebec where he was immediately place in intensive care and considered in critical condition. He was gone for almost three months and lost around 6 stone, the doctors claimed he was only a few days away from starving to death.