Princess Leia - the dog previously known as Yoda..

Yesterday morning, three separate people asked if we could help "Yoda" a poor dog who was only looking for a place to live out his last days in a comfortable place. It was truly a hospice case, but that is what we do, and we felt particularly strongly that we should check on this boy. Bandit's foster Dad had even offered to help with fostering if necessary... we knew that we couldn't say no.
Here is the photo and description that we responded to:

This old boy is going to live his last days @ Greenbrier Animal Control....

We braced ourselves for the worst. At the very least, we would be able to give him a comfortable place to rest his head for those last days. We hoped that it would be better than that.
At Greenbrier Animal Control, we met one of the truly good people in this world. Randy, the sole animal control officer in Greenbrier, TN met us at the shelter in the midst of a bad day and between multiple emergencies.  Randy not only maintains the day to day operations of this small, capacity 10 dogs, animal shelter, but has worked to develop a network of rescues and volunteers that has resulted in only one euthanasia this year. Because of limited resources and horribly high counts of owner surrenders, strays and other homeless dogs, rural animal controls have traditionally had the highest kill rates of any of the shelters. The successes of Randy and the network who works with Greenbrier AC, are incredible and commendable. Yoda would have, that very day, have been the second euthanasia of the year.
When we met "Yoda" who had up until yesterday been laying on the concrete floor, "he" was standing at the door of his kennel waiting for us. Good start....Randy immediately realized that a mistake had been made and that Yoda was indeed a female. Keeping with the Star Wars theme, we renamed her Princess Leia.
We thought that we would have to carry her to the car, but when we put a leash on her, she followed us right to the car and Randy helped her in. She remained passive and non-agressive. We noticed that poor Princess Leia had some serious issues. Her eyes were covered with a white shroud and only a slit of pupil showed, she had scars and sores all over her body, she was very slow and cautious and behaved strangely with labored breathing and strange periods of extended spacing out. On the ride to OFSDS, she curled up in the foot well behind the passenger seat of the car and waited...
When we arrived at our final destination, Princess climbed resignedly out of the car. She was easily led into our recovery room and spent the next hour or so checking out her new digs. She would walk around the perimeter of the room, then would sniff (but not drink) at her water bowl and then sniff (but not eat out of) her food bowl. She made several of these rounds of the room. Soon after we took her for a walk around the yard then she went back and tried to get some sleep.

first walk through the yard

look at her poor eyes....

Her first attempt at sleep

I wrapped a comforter around her and gave her a toy and she slept

This morning, Princess woke up better than yesterday. She went out for a short walk and walked around her room some more. In the late morning we took her to see Dr. Benner to find out what was really going on.....
The news was much better than we had anticipated! Yes, Princess is not perfect. She was covered in fleas, has hookworm. Dr B feels that he reason that her eyes look so bad is because she is severely dehydrated and her third eyelid (dogs have them, we don't) is covering her cornea to protect it. She got SubQ fluids while she was there (and we got a lesson in SubQ fluids that may come in handy some day), de-flea, and wormer and came back with antiobiotics, steroids and more wormer. We are waiting on shots, preventatives and spay until she is stronger. She is probably middle-aged rather than a senior citizen.
Although we do not want to focus on what was in favor of focusing on what can be, it is possible that this poor girl was a bait dog or had had been attacked by another animal in her recent past.

eyes are still bad, but we are hoping they get better soon

she is actually starting to enjoy her walks

Tonight, Princess took her walk and peed while she was walking, a first. She has eaten two hot dogs today (one with hidden antibiotics), but will still not eat her food. She is friendly and seems to love the company of humans. We are thrilled with the progress of this "hospice" dog.