WHATI/LACMARTRE - She'll have frostbite scars for the rest of her life, but this puppy is lucky to be alive. Yuki, a three-week-old Husky-Labrador Retriever mix, was left outside a home in Whati in -30 C temperatures just after she was born.

Caylee Fieber, a certified veterinarian assistant at The Great Slave Animal Hospital in Yellowknife, holds a recently rescued puppy named Yuki. - Ian Vaydik / NNSL photo

Her mother and three other puppies didn't survive, but a call to police from a concerned neighbour led Cpl. Jeremie Landry to her just in time.

The Whati RCMP detachment commander, who has three dogs of his own, responded to the complaint on Nov. 22, walking across resident Anthony Bishop's property to find the sole surviving puppy had since been taken inside.

"That's when I located the mother dog that was deceased as well as three other puppies that were deceased," Landry said, adding that upon entering the home he discovered "there was no heat or electricity in the house and he (Bishop) had no means to properly take care of a puppy of that age."

Bishop, 39, was arrested on charges of animal cruelty and released on the conditions that he not own or live with any animals while he waits to speak to the charges in court on March 9.

Landry said this is not the first time police have been called to investigate animal cruelty complaints against Bishop, who does not keep sled dogs. Prior to February 2010, nearly 10 dogs were taken from his property and sent to the NWT SPCA in Yellowknife.

Before the updated NWT Dog Act was tabled at the legislative assembly last month, the territory was known for having one of the most lenient animal control legislations and one of the highest incidences of animal cruelty in Canada. According to a 2009 report by the Animal Legal Defense Fund, a California-based non-profit animal rights organization, the NWT, tied with Nunavut, has the lowest standard for animal protection in Canada.

The NWT SPCA, which shares space with the Great Slave Animal Hospital in Yellowknife, is consistently full, packed with formerly neglected dogs waiting for better homes.

Now, Yuki shares their plight.

Landry took the newborn puppy home with him, got some syringes from the health centre and filled them with milk to feed her every hour, all night, until an Air Tindi flight took her to the Great Slave Animal Hospital the next day.

"To me, it was what I would call a no-brainer. I knew at that point that the puppy was in bad condition and if it wasn't tended to immediately that it would not have survived, so I felt that I was doing only what would be required to make sure that it had a chance, at least, of surviving," Landry said. "Having dogs is not a right but it should be a privilege. If a person is going to decide that they're going to have dogs, or any sort of an animal, they have to make sure they treat that animal properly."

Yuki won't be ready for adoption until she is two months old, but until then she's getting around-the-clock care from certified veterinarian assistant Caylee Fieber.

"I've been her foster mom since day one," said Fieber. She was the one to give the puppy a name -- a fitting one, too, since "Yuki" is the Japanese word for snow.

Staff at the hospital are monitoring Yuki's growth to make sure there won't be any long-term problems related to the hypothermia she suffered. They also want to give her all the required shots and de-worming medication before she is eligible for adoption.

Yuki is special because she survived, Fieber said, but her situation is not unique.

"Unfortunately it is something that we see pretty much on a regular basis and it doesn't really seem to matter what time of year it is. In her case, we don't normally see puppies this small come in. Usually they end up passing away," she said.

"When they're this small, a lot of them don't make it so she's a very fortunate little girl that the RCMP was able to get a hold of her and take care of her."

"She's very, very, very strong."

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