Many of us animal lovers say that if we are ever faced with the decision to eat our pets to survive and dying, we would rather die. Truth is that we don’t know for sure this would be our decision until we are forced to make it in real life. For 44-year-old, Marco Lavoie, eating his German shepherd, was the only option he had to survive.
Earlier this July, Lavoie, a Canadian resident, took off on a three month solitary canoe trip across Canada’s wilderness. He took his pet along the trip, but unfortunately, Lavoie lost his food and canoe to a bear on the Nottaway River in Quebec.
Since then, the Canadian man had been fending for himself and his dog, but with the lack of food and no rescue in sight, Lavoie had to kill and eat his own German shepherd to survive.
“Up there, in the Canadian shield, there’s little plant life to live off so he would have been slowly, painfully dying. It’s an amazing feat that he was able to keep himself alive this long with almost no equipment,” Caleb Musgrave, a survival instructor with Ontario’s Canadian Bushcraft, told the Montreal Gazette.
Lavoie was found by authorities on November 2, 2013 after a family member reported him missing. The report came after Lavoie failed to check in with friends and family.
The heartbreaking decision to eat his dog was not an easy one, but Lavoie came to this decision a few days after he encountered the bear and lost all survival gear. The desperate man killed his pet using a rock.
When authorities found the stranded outdoorsman, he was in deplorable conditions. Lavoie was suffering from hypothermia, dehydration, had lost 90 lbs, and was barely able to speak. Authorities say that if the outdoors man was found just a few days later he would have been found dead.
Lavoie is hospitalized at the moment and he will remain under medical care for a few more weeks.
Richard Carbanneu, a Quebec Provincial Police spokesperson said Lavoie’s first words to authorities after being rescued were that he wanted a new dog.
“He is very ill and he can barely talk, but when our officers spoke to him in hospital the only thing he said was, ‘I want to get a new dog,'” said Carbanneu. “I suppose he must feel very guilty about eating his pet, it is obvious he loved him very much and did not want to do what he did.”
