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Koda Saves Toddler in Yukon Bush
by: Mark Hume, The Globe and Mail, Vancouver
Koda had wandered off before and often came home from the bush with porcupine quills in his face.
As the mother of two sons, Ms. Dolan said she knew what Kale's mother was going through, and comforted her by saying: “That's my dog out there. He won't leave your son.”
Mr. Bondarchuk, who joined the ground search, said he was told the father of the missing boy had pulled some porcupine quills out of the dog's face before his son had vanished.
Keiser Sterriah, 14, was getting ready to go hunting with his father, Norman, when news about the missing boy spread through Ross River. They were among a group of about 25 volunteers who responded, along with search and rescue specialists from Faro and Whitehorse.
“They told us we were looking for a little boy in a T-shirt, he had no jacket, and he was last seen with a yellow dog,” Keiser said. “They told us to look under logs because he might be curled up there. And we just started going through the bush … it's very dense there, lots of marshes … there were grizzly tracks nearby,” he said.
“I can only imagine what was going through the mother's mind at the time,” Michael Pealow, a member of the Whitehorse District Search and Rescue Society team wrote in blog posted on the weekend.
“The night was cold and wet and the terrain in the area is rough. . . Most adults wouldn't make it through the night before succumbing to hypothermia, let alone a two-year-old child.”
At 6:40 Friday evening – nearly 25 hours after Kale vanished – a helicopter using forward-looking infrared radar picked up a heat image on the ground, about two kilometres from the camp site. The pilot saw a dog running for cover.
Bill Wood, of the Faro Search and Rescue team, said a ground crew working nearby went to the scene and found the boy, about 40 metres off the gravel road.
They later recovered Koda, who had been scared by the helicopter. He was still stuck with porcupine quills, which the rescuers removed.
“I'm sure it definitely helped [the boy survive],” said Mr. Wood of the dog.
“Overnight they would have been able to cuddle for warmth and a companion makes a world of difference – it doesn't matter if you're a little boy or an adult.”
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