Kassina Ryder
Northern News Services
Published Monday, July 14, 2008

MITTIMATALIK/POND INLET - When Jerry Lee Smale, 13, went out to play with Lazarus Enooagak, 9, in Pond Inlet last month, he had no idea he would end up saving his friend's life.

The boys were chasing lemmings in front of a house in the community early in the morning, according to Lazarus' mother, Anita Enooagak. The boys noticed a dog was near the house so they turned to run away, but Lazarus fell and the dog began attacking him. Jerry acted quickly and managed to beat the dog until it let Lazarus go.

"Jerry heard screams and he looked back," Enooagak said. "He got scared for a bit but he grabbed his slingshot and hit the dog with his slingshot and kicked him and pushed him and grabbed my son and brought him to his house."

Enooagak said Jerry Lee even tried to clean Lazarus' wounds, but got scared when he saw how much blood Lazarus was losing and woke Enooagak up.

"He said 'Anita, Anita, your son got attacked by a dog,'" Enooagak said. "I looked at him and he was bleeding all over so I ran to the phone, called the nurse and took him to the health centre."

She said Lazarus received stitches and rabies shots until it was determined that the dog was not carrying the disease.

Enooagak said the dog was a husky that was used for polar bear hunting and it was not the first time it had attacked someone in the community. It had been tied with a long leash that enabled it to reach Lazarus when he fell. She added that the owners of the dog felt badly about the attack and said they were sorry for what had happened.

"The owners apologized to me and my son," Enooagak said. "They were very sympathetic about it."

The dog has since been destroyed.

"In Inuit tradition we believe that if a dog bites a human, you're not supposed to shoot it until the person heals," Enooagak said. "So after 10 days, the dog was shot."

Colin Saunders, acting SAO for Pond Inlet, saw Lazarus after the attack and said Jerry Lee's bravery is commendable.

"It could have been significantly worse," Saunders said. "I think that the little boy, Jerry Lee, stood up to the plate and more or less saved the boy's life."

The health centre could not comment on the attack by press time due to patient confidentiality, but Jerry Lee's father Chuck Smale said he heard that the dog certainly would have killed Lazarus if Jerry Lee hadn't intervened.

"I only got it secondhand," said Smale. "But I heard from somebody else that the nurse did say Jerry saved his life."

Jerry Lee is currently attending a cadet camp in Whitehorse.

Jasper Singurie, the hamlet's bylaw officer, said dog attacks do happen in Pond Inlet, but they are not a common occurrence.