DogTown (7 page)

In the initial stages of his treatment, Dr. Mike wanted to keep Aristotle in the clinic and in isolation, just in case the ringworm culture came back positive. Aristotle started out getting medicated baths once a week—sparingly, because his skin was so fragile; Dr. Mike didn’t want to cause more harm than healing. Aristotle took his medical baths in a big stainless steel utility sink. It was during the baths that he began to come out of his shell, and a fun-loving side began to emerge. With soapy water dripping off what little fur he had, and his little winsome face looking up at the person bathing him, Aristotle appeared even more lamentable, albeit more comical, than usual, so much so that his handler could only laugh. As much as Aristotle brightened the Dogtown staff’s days, the treatments seemed to brighten his. After each one his behavior turned friskier and more playful, bringing out the bright, happy personality formerly hidden by his illness. His skin looked better, too, so Dr. Mike increased the baths to twice a week.

A SUPERSTAR

One day, about a month after the beginning of his treatment, Aristotle was sitting in Dr. Mike’s lap with his paws on the vet’s chest, gently sniffing his shirt. “He seems a lot happier,” Dr. Mike said. “I think the baths make him feel better, and now the antibiotics and antifungals are kicking in. He’s out of his cage more, so that helps, too.”

Aristotle was looking a little sharper, too. Fur was beginning to grow on his face and back, though it was patchy and uneven. In some ways it made him look even more comical than he did when he first arrived. There were not quite as many scabs, though his face was still unsightly. “I think he’s a superstar,” said Dr. Mike soothingly. “Hi, superstar.” Ari looked up at him, gently sniffing his shirt, blinking his big, questioning eyes.

Dr. Mike still had not succeeded in figuring out the root cause of the mysterious, disfiguring illness that had brought the little dog here. Over the following month, though, Aristotle continued making progress. Although he spent much of his day in the laundry room, a true terrier personality had begun to emerge. No longer was Ari quiet and shy; he was instead a comedian and a dog with boundless energy. When Ari heard someone coming, he would start jumping up like a little pogo stick to get a peek over the top of the laundry room’s Dutch door. You could see his smiling face appearing above the top of the door, pausing a moment at the top of his jump, dropping out of sight, and appearing again a moment later with the identical expression on his face.

SEARCHING FOR ANSWERS

A month or so later, Dr. Mike did another examination of Aristotle’s skin. By this time, he’d been having twice-a-week medicated baths for two months and had been on the antibiotic for almost as long. He had been on the antifungal for about six weeks and an ear medication for about four weeks. And he’d also been getting ointment in his eyes to keep them moist.

After all this treatment, Aristotle’s skin looked much better, exhibiting hardly any crusting. It was also much less red and inflamed. He was getting some hair growth along his sides and neck, and he was a lot less itchy and smelly. But he was still far from healed. Most of his body still looked as if it had been burned. His small, anxious little face was still disfigured with scabs. And for terriers, who would be bouncing off the walls if they really felt better, Aristotle still exhibited a more subdued energy level than expected. Dr. Mike was not convinced that the treatments he’d been able to provide were really cutting all the way down to the root of the problem.

He knew that Aristotle had a skin infection, and that once that was under control, the dog would be noticeably better. Even so, that was not the only thing that was going on here. Dr. Mike was still baffled by the nature of the underlying ailment. He was concerned that, after having “scraped off that top layer and made him a lot more comfortable,” he was still stuck at a level of healing that just would not improve without a definitive answer.

REACHING OUT FOR HELP

That’s when Dr. Mike decided to call in a specialist—a veterinary dermatologist named Dr. John Angus. Having a consultation with a specialist is one of the great luxuries of a facility like Dogtown. This is far out of reach of most sanctuaries.

Dr. Angus was a brawny man in his early 40s. He arrived wearing a suit coat but no tie, considerably more formally dressed than the strictly-for-comfort attire of the Dogtown staff. He was pleasant but businesslike when he came in for his consultation about Aristotle. When Dr. Mike showed him a photograph of the little dog as he’d looked when he was first admitted, Dr. Angus, taken aback, exclaimed, “Oh, my goodness!” with a little gasp.

Then Aristotle himself came into the examining room, and a volunteer set him down on the exam table. He seemed frightened and almost inert, as if by keeping completely motionless he could avoid whatever danger might lurk in the room. Despite the regrowth of some of his hair, he still looked a bit like a scared lamb, with comical patches of fur sprouting out of his pink skin here and there, like weeds. Dr. Angus began closely examining his skin.

“I’m still seeing crusting pustules, but not the deep erosions that I see on this photograph, so that’s good,” he said. “The areas where his skin is still rough, that’s OK, we’ll get hair regrowth there. I’m not sure what’s going on with his eyes. It almost looks like he can’t close his eyes because of scarring or his disease state. Some of the scarring could be chemical scarring or primary disease.”

Even though the initial culture had been negative for ringworm, the dermatologist suggested testing for it again, partly due to Aristotle’s breed. “Lots of times these terrier breeds will try to hunt like little vermin, burrowing down into a hole, and they’ll get ringworm spores on their faces. And then it will start in the face and just spread. I think we should repeat the ringworm cultures, even though the first test came up negative.”

He was also still concerned about
Demodex
mites.

“We had done the test from skin scrapes and they tested negative, but Dr. Angus brought up a good point that one or two negative tests doesn’t
always
mean it’s negative,” Dr. Mike said. “Sometimes you don’t see mites after the skin scrape but they’re still there. It might mean you just didn’t do the right spot (although on Aristotle, it’s pretty easy to find where the right spot might be). Or you didn’t scrape deep enough. Or, just due to dumb luck, the spot you picked didn’t have any mites. Or the mites can hide in their hair follicles and be a little hard to find. So he suggested that we also repeat a skin scrape to look for more mites.”

Dr. Angus also recommended a biopsy, for a look beneath the surface of Ari’s skin. Rather than simply scraping tissue samples from the surface of the skin, the biopsy would punch a small, circular hole into the skin and extract a tissue sample from beneath the surface. Then the sample would be sent to a lab for a pathologist to read. Another sample would be sent for culture, to see if fungi or bacteria were contributing to Ari’s problems.

Undeterred by negative results from the first ringworm culture and the skin scrapes, Dr. Angus felt that a biopsy might help get to the bottom of the problem. A skin biopsy was normally a fairly benign procedure, the main risk being the dangers inherent in sedating or anesthetizing the animal. Once the little dog was sedated, Dr. Mike would take a small, curved blade a bit like an apple-coring tool and lift out small samples of subsurface tissue. Then the samples would be put in formalin, a preservative, and sent to a lab. (Dr. Mike had not done the procedure earlier because he was afraid that any sutures he made to Ari’s flimsy, fragile skin after the biopsy wouldn’t hold. It would almost be like trying to sew up a damp paper bag.)

Not long after the consultation with Dr. Angus, Dr. Mike sedated Ari to get him ready for the punch biopsy. When Dr. Mike laid him on the examining table, Ari had a cone-shaped oxygen mask over his face. He looked like an astronaut asleep on the moon. “We’re going to find out what’s wrong with your skin, once and for all!” Dr. Mike said affectionately to the dog. “OK, handsome?” Aristotle, already on the moon, did not respond. Once Dr. Mike had taken the biopsy sample and sutured up the wound—which did not burst after all—there was nothing to do but wait. “This is the hardest part,” he said.

ANSWERS AT LAST

When the biopsy results came in, they were both surprising and unsurprising. Aristotle turned to out to have an extremely severe infestation of the
Demodex
mites that cause demodectic mange. Dr. Mike had been right after all. For some reason, the skin scrape just hadn’t caught it the first time.

But Aristotle’s problems didn’t end there. He also had a staphylococcal skin infection that was resistant to methicillin, the medication Dr. Mike had prescribed, so the vet decided to change his antibiotic. He also prescribed a new antiparasite medication, to mount a frontal attack on the infestation of mites.

And he decided to recommend that Aristotle be fostered—taken home with a staff member or volunteer, rather than kept at the sanctuary. Kristi Littrell, Adoption Coordinator, volunteered for this happy task.

Even though the housing for dogs at Best Friends is clean and spacious, and animals are regularly walked and provided with enriching playtime, fostering would help Ari on several levels, Dr. Mike said. For one thing, Kristi could more closely monitor the effects of the medication. Ari would get out of his cage at night, so he would have more room to run. That was crucial for a terrier, a breed with so much energy the dogs seem capable of powering a small city. And of course, there was the ineffable healing power of a human touch.

“It feels good to help a dog like Aristotle, because he was such a miserable dog,” Dr. Mike said. “It makes you feel better about what you can do. We don’t give up hope on dogs here, and there’s
reason
not to give up hope. Aristotle went from being a painful, shy, scab-covered mutt to a crazy, bouncy, not-itchy monkey. That’s why we do this.”

When Ari first arrived at Kristi’s house, he seemed sad to leave his former home in the laundry room. He quietly explored the house, not making much noise at all. But he quickly grew used to Kristi’s place and made himself at home. He barked from first thing in the morning until the sun went down, telling Kristi his opinion on just about everything. His energy level began to soar, and his love of play returned with a vengeance. Kristi happily observed, “He loves life—everything is a party to him.”

FINDING A HOME

Since his arrival, Aristotle had been a part of Best Friends’ Guardian Angel program. The Guardian Angel website
(http://www.bestfriends.org/ guardianangel)
features animals, often sick or injured, who need specialized care. It’s a place where Best Friends members are able to connect with the cases that benefit the most from their support of the society. Each animal gets his own page, and staff update the pages with photos and progress journals that tell how things are going. (Even after animals are adopted, updates from their new families are posted as well.) Members are able to sponsor specific animals.

From his first days at Dogtown, Aristotle’s page was populated with update after update, detailing the remarkable recovery of the feisty little dog. Members could see for themselves how far he had come—from the photos of his earliest days when his skin was so painful to look at to the most recent photos where Aristotle sported a big smile and showed off his new, short coat of brown-and-white fur. Kristi knew that “there are people who, if there is not enough data on him weekly, they worry. They know he’s in good hands, but they live for the updates.”

Aristotle’s biggest fans were inspired by his journey and sent many tokens of their appreciation to him. Gifts, notes, and well wishes poured in from all over the country, as well as Italy and France. Some people sent him food, stuffed toys, and little sweaters with “Ari” sewn onto the back. “Ari touches people,” Kristi said. “He’s a dog that would have been passed over in most places, but here he thrived. And he touches people’s hearts.”

When he goes RVing with his new family, Aristotle must wear protective goggles to shield his eyes from wind and sand.

The Guardian Angel program is also a way for animals like Aristotle to find forever homes. Allowing members to follow a dog’s progress gives them a way to connect and even to fall in love. And that’s just what happened with Aristotle. Applications poured in to adopt him, an embarrassment of riches.

Kristi and the Dogtown team had a tough choice to make and seriously considered every candidate. Because of Ari’s skin, Dr. Mike thought a home in the northern states might be best to reduce the dog’s exposure to the sun. Kristi knew from fostering Ari that he could be needy, so the ideal home would have a caregiver present most of the time. And Ari’s high energy level required an active home, preferably with other doggy siblings for Ari to play with.