Jako's story

Jako's story

Jako

11/2/04

Jako is currently six years old. Jako came to us as “Jake” with aggression issues.

Jako is a success story for us. He came to us as a “fuzzy” boy. As you can see by the first photo, his entire coat was fuzz. People, let me tell you this doesn’t happen over night. This boy had to have felt bad for quite some time in order for his coat to be this way.

His tail is your classic “rat tail”. Note the lack of hair near the base of the tail and the tuff of hair that remains at the end of it.

Jako had aggression issues, not just from the fact that he’d been abused all his life (4 years old when we got him on August 11, 2002), but because the thyroid just wasn’t right. You get grumpy when you don’t feel good, don’t you? Wouldn’t it stand to reason that a pet would too?

The problem was, Jako was in an “all breed” rescue that didn’t recognize the signs of hypothyroidism. After all, how could they possibly know what was prevalent in all the breeds they deal with? So, they placed him in a foster with a small child and other larger dogs and eventually that child got bit. There were a lot of unfortunate circumstances surrounding that incident and a lot of mistakes made. But, they were corrected when he was turned over to us.

We immediately gave him a bath and assess the coat. We found some sores, and very short fuzzy hair. His eyes were what I call “vacant”. There was no life in them. At this point, he could have cared less where he was or if he lived. And if he’d ended up anywhere else, he may have indeed been euthanized for the biting. But, I saw something in him that gave me hope.

When we did his T-4 it was so low it didn’t register on the scale (our vet’s lab rates them from 1-4). So, we started him on soloxine and cephlexan (antibiotic). After 30 days, we retested and readjusted the soloxine (for the low thyroid). At the four month mark, I felt it was taking way too long to notice a difference. However, he was beginning to get long hair just behind the shoulders. With Jako, it was a strange sight. It was as if he was not only healing from the inside out, but from the front to back. We watched the fuzz slowly get replaced with long, silky deep black hair. Suddenly, one day I noticed his eyes were happy again.

Many of you probably want to know…has he bitten since? Yes, he did bite someone that came in the house unannounced. So, who do you fault there? I started him in agility classes. He is doing very well with them. He now lets others touch him and even reposition him on the equipment without growling. He is definitely “my dog”. He is very attached to me and very protective.

He is a very pretty, healthy boy now! He is truly a success story!