Hairless German Shepherds Capture Hearts At Shelter, Quickly Find Forever Homes

Aug 01, 2020 by apost team

Two German shepherds with alopecia, Xavier and Zander, have found forever homes after being put up for adoption at a shelter in North Carolina.

Upon finding the abandoned hairless dogs, the shelter employees thought that the two German shepherd puppies had just poorly been taken care of. However, their odd appearance is actually a rare medical condition among some dog breeds. Despite the dogs’ odd hairless appearance, their shelter would just act as a quick stop on their ways out to their forever homes.

As explained in a video by The Dodo, after Xavier and Zander finally made their way to the North Carolina shelter, one of the vets diagnosed the dogs with alopecia: a disease found in dogs and humans that prevents the hair follicles all over their bodies from growing new hair. The disease also causes hair to drop off in small patches mostly unnoticeable in humans. The condition can also die down and recur developing slowly between instances. The puppies were healthy though a little scared of the new surroundings and people.

A woman named Nicole kept the two puppies in foster care for about a month. These women kept cleaning them up, feeding them, and getting them accustomed to the presence of people and being around other dogs. They often had matching outfits on when they went out to play. A lot of people to notice of the two hairless siblings and liked to own the two German shepherd puppies.

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It was clear when the two dogs were finally ready to be adopted since there was an excess of 50 applications from people who would like to own the hairless puppies. It was quite unexpected given their odd appearance. However, Nicole had grown fond of the puppies after watching them play and frolic around and she knew they were great dogs.

Finally landing a home with an individual that also had alopecia, Xavier would slowly grow fond of Tyler, who gave him another name, Apollo, immediately after he got the hairless puppy. On the other hand, his sibling was adopted by a couple, Tyler and Adia, who immediately also renamed the puppy 'Mylo'. Zander now had a new brother, another German shepherd, owned by the couple named Tank.

The couple was excited to be chosen as Zander’s adopters and could not wait to introduce Mylo to Tank on getting home. Mylo would no longer have to be shy. In fact, he was already starting to get accustomed to people at the shelter, stealing the heart of everyone who took notice of them.

According to Aida, she came to love the idea to adopt Zander after seeing her sitting in a video that had been made of the two at the shelter. Seeing his tiny butt wrinkles, Aida fell in love with the dog, “he looked like an armadillo," said Aida, as she gladly accepted to adopt the hairless buddies into his new forever home. Evidently excited by the occurrences around him, Mylo had already begun socializing with his new owners even before they could get off the shelter.

While the shelter had not gotten any such cases in the recent past, it was quite fascinating to see how the two hairless German shepherds easily stole the heart of anyone who took a glance at them.

First, it would be just a long glance, then they would all fall in love with the puppies’ appearance and energetic mood. The experience was also humbling, seeing as the condition of the dogs’ skins didn’t deter people from looking to adopt the dogs. Instead, they spurred them to make more adoption applications after seeing how much of darlings the two abandoned puppies really were. Nevertheless, Xavier and Zander, or should I call them Apollo and Mylo, had finally found their forever homes and had the team at the shelter, especially Nicole, to thank for that.

Do you have a dog with alopecia? Tell us about your experience in the comments and pass this along to someone who's thinking of adopting their own dog!