Carter Blanchard was 6 years old when white patches began to appear near his eyes.
The diagnosis was vitiligo, a disease that gradually removes the color from the skin. For a boy from Arkansas, that meant teasing, strange looks, and a phrase that broke his mother, Stephanie: “I hate my face”. She searched online for something that would restore her son’s confidence, and found Rowdy, a black Labrador from Oregon who, at 14 years old, had exactly the same condition.
An anonymous person donated 5,000 dollars to pay for the trip. On March 18, 2017, Carter finally hugged Rowdy and spent hours without letting go of him. For the first time, you understand how he felt: he was not alone; not even a dog with the same patches was giving up.