A four-legged passenger was also caught in a horrific car crash on August 5.

After a traumatic experience as one of the victims of the four-vehicle accident on Highway 16 Wednesday night, a golden retriever was taken to the Jasper Veterinary Clinic to be treated for injuries.

Dr. Janet Jones was called in to tend to Sonny, the golden retriever that was in a Ford Explorer traveling eastbound on Highway 16 when it was hit by a pickup truck driving on the wrong side of the road.

According to animal health technician Nicole Klopfenstein, the dog only sustained a few minor injuries.

Klopfenstein said the dog had an injury to his inside leg, near his groin, where it looked like someone had taken a knife to it, leaving lots of gashes. She said Dr. Jones had to remove glass from the wound the night before.

“Then this morning when I was cleaning it there wasn’t anymore glass. But it was still oozing blood and nasty. It looks like someone took a knife to the inside of its leg,” Klopfenstein said the next day.

“But it walks around, went for a pee this morning. It’s amazing how nothing ever happened to the dog.”

Klopfenstein said when the owners of the dog came to pick Sonny up the next day he was very happy to see them, wagging his tail as he walked out of the clinic as if nothing had happened.

About six people came to pick up the dog, and Klopfenstein said she thinks they were all in the vehicle when the accident occurred.

“(The owner) said (the pickup) caught the end of their car and then head on with the next one. She was pretty shaken up this morning when she came in. She’s just lucky that she survived,” Klopfenstein said. “She said it almost felt like the car, the one that was hitting them, was  going for them and kept going, just going round and round, trying to pick every car out.”

The vehicle Sonny and its owners were in was only hit by the back tire of the pickup truck. Sonny was obviously thrown around as part of the crash, she said.

“And of course he’s not wearing a seatbelt, so he was probably like a washing machine for a bit. But he survived.”

Klopfenstein said when she went to work in the morning she was under the impression the people in the vehicle that Sonny was in didn’t survive, so when they walked in the door and asked for their dog, she couldn’t believe it.

According to RCMP, alcohol was believed to have played a role in the accident.