Jayden's Recovery

Jayden had much to recover from: malnutrition, massive hair loss, open sores and so on. Initially we assumed the raw skin and sores were from lack of food and being out in the Phoenix sum all day but after some observation we changed our minds. We realized that he was scratching himself so often (nearly constant... even at night) that he was pulling out his own hair and making his own open sores.
Our first step was to give him socks so his claws could not do so much damage.


We worked with our vet and put him on antibiotics and anti-fungal medication as well as allergy and steroid to get him healed up. We ordered special puppy food for highly allergic dogs. All of this helped him heal up and his sores closed up and hair began growing back.
During this time we all fell in love with this guy. I can not describe his awesomeness in words. Even Obi was happy about having him around and they played almost non-stop. Below he is ready to pounce on Obi!
Our whole family began considering adopting this one ourselves. We loved him! Happy, cute, playful, well-behaved, funny, loving and stinky. Yeah... he had an odd odor from all of his skin problems but this slowly went away as he healed. Below he is looking much better than the first day we picked him up. Good hair growth and his body is starting to fill in a bit.


After 3 months of recovery time with us, Jayden was ready for adoption and a home was found for him in the eastern states. I admit... I was pretty nervous about sending this puppy on a plane ride to a complete stranger, but we were assured by AZ Schnauzer Rescue that this was an excellent home for him.

We still considered the idea of keeping Jayden, but we knew if we did this we would have to stop fostering other rescue dogs. We decided it was more important to continue helping the dogs in need. Take Jayden for example... if Shae had not been able to pick him up that day, he would have been put down. So.. we all agreed that letting him go was the best choice.

Here he is shortly before he left us. Fully integrated into our "pack". Also featured is my Dad, his schnauzer, Obi and two of my kids.



I'll admit that when Jayden left us, I cried. I cried my ugly cry. It took the whole family some time to "move on" and stop missing him so much.