Fairbanks North Star Borough Shelter Stories, Zeke's Purpose

Siki! Siki, siki, siki! Let's go! Come here! He's like, "House!" I was at Cold Spot Feeds getting a jacket for one of my other dogs before a skijor race and happened to run into him, and he had no hair and was in pretty bad condition.

So I asked the lady that he was with what his story was, and it turns out that he was a shelter dog that she was fostering. He had had a pretty rough start and had a really bad case of mange from stress reaction, just being in some bad conditions prior to coming to the shelter. And so we got to talking. I had my dog in Cold Spot with me, and they hit it off, and I went and adopted him the next day.

And so, you know, we had him on a bunch of different medications. They weren't really working 100%, and the vets had kind of straight up told me, you know, at his first appointment that there was a good chance that, you know, nothing was going to work and we were going to have to put him down. After he started coming out on runs, it really took the edge off of that, and he was able to relax and actually sleep and get some good rest. And that's when I really started to notice, like, the turn in his recovery. Like, he started coming out with us every day and The more he ran, the better he got.

And, you know, it's a good part due to his veterinary care and the vets and the shelter fund, but also really due to running this. I think that, like, was emotionally healing for him, which he really needed some sort of outlet to kind of help him. And yeah, everything kind of clicked into place.