The Hairless Dog

Do dogs just seek me out? I was fixing my fence that had been tagged over the weekend when a dog walked up and stared at me. He has less than half his hair, isn’t neutered, has several sores and is underweight. Dammit.

I’d seen him in the neighborhood over a week ago—but at that time he wanted nothing to do with me. Well, not yesterday. Yesterday, I was his best friend. He gladly let me put a leash on him, feed and water him, and put him in the garage.

After about an hour, I went out to check on him and he’d busted out of the garage (if you saw my crappy-ass garage, you’d see just how easy that would be). I walked down the street and found him and he happily followed me back home. I put him in a crate in the garage, gave him more food, a treat and a Benedryl and went to bed—thinking about what I’d do in the morning.

Well, morning came and I decided to take him to my vet. If mange was his only issue (and likely heartworms) and he was young, I’d treat him and try to find him a home. If he was an old dog and had a long list of ailments, I decided I’d put him down and end what must be pure agony.

Well, other than being extremely unattractive, he’s a nice boy and young and in pretty OK shape. He has demodectic mange, which I’ve read about but don’t really have experience with. So the vet is treating his mange and hanging on to him for now.

He looks like he’s probably mostly black with white feet. He’s tall and maybe a lab/pit mix, but even the vet couldn’t tell. Because of the hair loss, he just looks like a really wrinkly, old fart dog. We’ll see how he progresses.