After scouring the wooded area, she was ready to give up. But just then her husband found the dog, lying in a patch of brush at the end of the trail. “He said, ‘Stephanie, I don’t think he’s going to make it,’” Smith-Justus told The Dodo.
“At first it looked like he had been scalded,” Smith-Justus said. At just 4 months old, the puppy was covered in a severe case of demodectic mange that he likely caught from his mother. “It was pretty bad,” she said. “Imagine a second-degree burn.”
By pure chance, a veterinarian had just moved into a house down the street, and Smith-Justus and her husband picked up the little dog and ran over. “We didn’t even knock on the door,” she said. “I just ran over to their house with him.”
They rushed him to the veterinary clinic, where they realized his skin was just the beginning. He had been shot repeatedly with a pellet gun. He weighed just 15 kilos and had gone so long without food that his intestines had collapsed.
And because he was so malnourished, his ankles hadn’t developed properly. “His tendons had lost elasticity,” Smith-Justus explained. “He couldn’t stand on the pads of his paws. He would fall on his wrists… it was painful to watch him walk.”
Smith-Justus was heartbroken over Watkins’ condition and wanted to save him, but her top priority was to do the kindest thing.
“If he’s that bad, if he needs to be put down, I understand, but I want to do what’s best for him,” she told the vet. “And she said, ‘Let’s save him.’”
“He told me I wasn’t going to live and to say goodbye, and I did,” Smith-Justus said. “And the next morning, I was doing great.”
But a few weeks later, his recovery took a turn for the worse. He stopped eating, dropped from 30 pounds to 15, and had to have a feeding tube inserted, which he later chewed out. “It was like a comedy of errors,” Smith-Justus said of his recovery.
Watkins spent a total of 119 days living in the vet’s office and, briefly, in the ICU at Virginia Tech. And as he slowly fought his way back to health after his rough start in life, something equally poignant began to happen.
Smith-Justus began receiving an outpouring of support from people around the world who had heard Watkins’ story and wanted to encourage him on his road to recovery. Blankets and dog beds began arriving from all over the United States and even abroad; one family even came from several states away to visit him.
“Her photographs and her story must have resonated with them the same way they did with me,” Smith-Justus said.
And thanks to Watkins’ support team — and her determined spirit — she was finally able to return home with Smith-Justus on July 11.
Of course, he wasn’t completely free from doctors yet. Every Tuesday he had to go to the vet to get a persistent ear infection treated, and every Thursday he had to do a kind of “puppy chemo” to get rid of the demodectic mange.
Over the next few months, Watkins took bigger and bigger steps forward, and although he’s still recovering, he’s much closer to being a happy, healthy 10-month-old puppy than anyone thought possible.
And she continually rewards Smith-Justus, her friends and family for their continued improvement. For example, she used to be afraid of cars and weed whackers, but now she loves car rides. Her confidence is returning and she has already become stronger when running around the garden, something she learned to do without crying just a few weeks ago.
“He’s a joy, he’s a very nice dog,” she said. “He got stronger, his skin started to get better, his ears started to get better.”
He also found a best friend in his stuffed lobster, which Watkins likes to keep in his water bowl until bedtime and brings back to cuddle with.
And considering Watkins’ rough start to life, it’s surprising that he’s full of love. When Smith-Justus recently took in a group of soot-covered kittens and their mother who had been injured in a house fire, Watkins offered to adopt them as her own and cleaned them up as her mother watched warily.
Watkins still has a long way to go and is currently taking Prozac to relieve the stress of his medical treatments. But with each passing day, more is revealed about the little pup that was buried beneath all the trauma Watkins experienced in his young life.
“The doctors at Virginia Tech told me they were hoping and praying for him, but they didn’t give him much of a chance to survive… it was a shock to all of us,” she said. “It’s a miracle, it really is.”
If you’d like to contribute to Watkins’ veterinary expenses, you can make a donation here.
And if you’d like to help ensure other dogs aren’t abandoned like Watkins, you can give one a forever home – visit Adopt-a-Pet.com to see dogs in need near you.