A Tewksbury 7-year-old accomplished a goal she set out to tackle while fighting off a horrible skin condition that left her in the hospital for eight days. The youngster and her family fosters dogs, and when her hospital stay stopped her from saying goodbye to their second foster dog, she became determined to help 10 dogs find a home by her seventh birthday. 

Ariana Swenson was about to reach her sixth birthday when she came down with Staph Scalded Skin Syndrome. 

"The staph infection that started really small on her face started to spread very quickly," her mother Kasey Swenson said. "It attacks the top two layers of their skin pretty much everywhere, but the lower part of legs and arms. It causes the skin to blister and peel like a burn. In essence it looked like her entire body was burned." 

For days, her parents couldn't touch her, or else sheets of her skin could just come off. 

"[Our foster dog] went home the day after Ariana was admitted to Shriners, so she didn't get to see her go to her forever home," said Kasey. "She looked at us in the hospital and said can we help 10 before I turn seven? And of course, you look to your child and go yes, yes, yes, definitely." 

Dogs helped her heal

Antibiotics halted the attack on her body, and soon she began to recover physically, while mentally that healing came one dog at a time. 

"I think it gave her something else to focus on. There was a lot of medical trauma," Kasey said. 

They partnered with Big Wave Dog Rescue in Billerica. The family says they began fostering a new dog almost every month. "They just kept asking us to foster more dogs, so that's why we reached 10 before I turned seven," said Ariana. 

They hit the mark in October, well before her December birthday, and then exceeded their goal with an unexpected eleventh foster dog this year. 

"I cry because I am sad, and mom does sometimes to," said Ariana of the bittersweet moment of watching a dog find a forever home.
"We melted, all she cared about was other people and how they were doing," said Kasey. "She helps with all of them. She helps train them, feed them, whatever we ask her to do."