They were two lost souls in need of a true friend. Jonny Hickey was an eight-year-old boy with autism who didn't speak much at all. Xena was an emaciated, abused puppy who was so far gone that her rescuers doubted she would make it.
Then Jonny and Xena's paths crossed, and they changed each other's lives forever.
Diagnosed with autism at an early age, Jonny was comfortable around his family members, but social interactions with strange people and in new environments caused him to react in terror and withdraw into silence.
An officer rescued Xena after she collapsed in a backyard in Georgia. The puppy weighed four pounds, and her condition horrified the employees of the Dekalb Animal Services.
“I’ve been doing rescue probably for about 12 years, and I had never seen a dog that young in that sort of condition,” said Chrissy Kaczynski, the founding member of Canine Caravan Rescue, formerly Friends of Dekalb Animals rescue organization. “I brought her home with me and I didn’t think she’d make it through the night.”
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