A truck driver with Capital Transport, Nick Stoneburgh, helped make Christmas wishes come true for one family by returning their dog that was lost hundreds of miles from home.
The family was traveling home to North Pole, Alaska on November 9, 2017, when they made stop in Fort St John, BC. When the family stopped, somehow their dog Yukon got away.
Jeff Hayes, the owner of Yukon, told Global News, “We looked for a couple of hours and followed his tracks but never saw him again. He wasn’t coming when he was called. And we thought, ‘Oh my gosh, he’s just gone. There’s nothing we can do about it.’
I left a note there at the Mile 80 rest stop (near Fort St. John). I didn’t have cell service at the time, but people started calling my wife [in North Pole] that evening to say they saw the dog and he looks healthy but he won’t come to anybody.
He’s a rescue dog that we adopted and he’s always been very shy about trusting people.”
Once the family returned home, the 4 children that lost their dog were understandably heartbroken. One of the children, the 8-year-old, even wrote a letter to Santa pleading for the return of their dog.
Yukon belongs to a family with four young kids. One of the boys wrote this letter asking for his dog back for Christmas. pic.twitter.com/kNXxlGoHK9
— Kim Smith (@Kim_SmithTV) December 5, 2017
The search for Yukon
After this tweet, the community of Fort St. John came together to get Yukon back with his family.
One resident, Latoya Jones, said, “That tugged at my heartstrings. I said, ‘I need to go out and do what I can to help’.” Other residents in Fort St. John took to social media to post sightings of Yukon around town.
Jones explained, “This story is so popular in Fort St. John. Even people at my work are like, ‘Oh, you were involved with Yukon’s rescue.’ It took a village – like, it seriously took a village with this dog. People were out there feeding him.”
Finally, after being watched and cared for almost a week, Yukon was caught and ready to be transported home.
Hayes said “I thought, ‘This is miraculous, at least we know he’s healthy and he’s safe,’ but I didn’t know how the heck we were going to get our dog. It’s a four-day drive for me each way. And I just started a new job [with the U.S. Army] and I thought, ‘There’s no way I can take that much time off work’.”
Truck driver to the rescue
Once the dog was safe and sound, the community began contacting trucking companies to see if there were any trucks heading near Yukon’s home in North Pole.
Nick Stoneburgh, an Edmonton truck driver with Capital Transport, was contacted to help.
“It was kind of funny. Here’s St. Nick picking up a Christmas present for the kids,” Stoneburgh said. “How can you turn down kids at Christmas?”
Stoneburgh picked Yukon up in Fort St. John and met Hayes on November 30th in Beaver Creek, Yukon, according to Global News.
“I can’t even believe he’s back in our house right now,” Hayes said. “But the kids are so ecstatic and we were saying our prayers every night. What a Christmas story, it’s unbelievable. Everybody I talk to, nobody can believe this happened the way that it did.”