Denali, a senior rescue dog who was returned to the rescue after suffering the heartbreak of being surrendered by her family, is now looking for a loving home where she can run and nap all she wants.

Caitlin Knight has been the founder of Path of Hope Rescue in Spokane, Washington, and even though for the past few years, we’ve rescued many dogs from animal shelters, It's never easy seeing a foster dog being returned. Let’s take a look at Denali’s story of how she went from living on the street to finding a home in Spokane before being returned to us.

A cute mommy dog named Denali with white gray and dark black fur big brown puppy round eyes looking to left side of the picture standing on pet carpet and wooden floor indoor with a happy smile — Hello, my name is Denali, and yes, I know I’m absolutely gorgeous! (Path of Hope Facebook)

So Denali is officially back with the rescue. She is a hot mess. We are going to need marketing to put together some content to help her find her next home.

She was rescued from Texas and was the mom of the National Parks litter. Had her puppies in Texas. Dodo, the famous YouTube channel even did a video on her, though the focus was on her Texas fosters and not on us.

Denali and all the puppies were transported to Spokane. All were adopted. Denali was adopted by a sweet old couple dedicated to helping her overcome her extreme social anxiety and give her the life she deserved.

A cute mommy dog named Denali with white gray and dark black fur big brown puppy round eyes looking out the car window being driven inside a car with human volunteer going out for a walk — Denali loves traveling with her humans, but nothing good lasts forever (Path of Hope Facebook)

Path of Hope was contacted early this year by Denali's owner. He had gone through a year of hell. His wife had several strokes and then later passed away. During this time, he also had strokes. He lost his house trying to pay for the medical expenses. He and his family were working on trying to find assisted living for him.

During this time, Denali was dropped off at Spokanimal, an Animal Shelter in Spokane, even though we had been in contact with them the whole time. Because of her microchip, Spokanimal knew to call us and we picked her up the same day.

We were still willing to work with the family and temporarily foster her until the owner could find a permanent place to stay, in the meantime, Denali was placed with one of our fosters.

We were finally contacted by the family of the owner stating that Denali would not be returning to the owner. We are heartbroken for him. He lost his wife, his house, his independence and his dog.

A cute mommy dog named Denali with white gray and dark black fur big brown puppy round eyes looking at the human volunteer with camera taking dog picture next to a garden farm with green grass — Denali now has to find a new way back to a loving forever home, but we’re here to help! (Path of Hope Facebook)

The day she came into our custody, we started Denali on a weight loss plan. She was horribly obese at 91 lb. Her healthy weight is 40 lbs. As you can imagine, this puts strain on every body system.

And even though she wasn't legally ours yet, we had to take action on getting her weight down, and since then, her progress has been steady. Today she is at 63 lb! Still a long way to go though.

Shortly after coming back into our care, Denali had passed several small bladder stones. It took several weeks and she did not make it easy, but our foster finally got a urine sample. The urine was dark brown and full of crystals. In fact, our lab tech, Robin said that the slide was actually crunchy.

The next step was imaging and Suncrest got us in to see a vet in one day. Shoutout to Suncrest! And the results are not good. Denali has a bladder stone the size of an egg, plus many more, which have caused persistent pain in her everyday life.

She will need surgery as soon as we can. The cost for her visit today was $700, but the overall cost of her upcoming surgery would likely be $2400.

A cute mommy dog named Denali with white gray and dark black fur big brown puppy round eyes looking at the camera sitting on carpet indoor next to a big window with curtain sticking out her tongue — Is it Tongue out Tuesday yet? I’ve been practicing, you know? (Path of Hope Facebook)

Denali has had a long road. A pregnant stray dog on the streets of Texas was brought into a high-kill shelter and put on a euthanasia list. Rescued and finally placed with a family who cared and loved her so much, but unfortunately didn't have the discipline to keep her healthy.

We're not mad at her owner, he did the best he could. And we are so grateful that he reached out to us so that we could help him when he needed it most.

Denali managed to have her surgery done by Dr. Laura. Shoutout to Laura too! It cost us $900, which was way less than what we’d predicted. She's currently on lifetime prescription food, but is doing amazing and she's successfully lost over 30 lbs so far this year!

Denali is one of the lucky ones to make it out of Texas alive and we are going to make sure that she gets back to healthy and finds a family to love her for the rest of her days.

Caitlin Knight. Founder of PHR.

Path of Hope Rescue is a foster-based rescue located in Spokane Washington. We have a dedicated page called Available Dogs for all of our foster dogs & puppies who are still waiting for their forever homes and loving humans. Some of them have been with us for a while but many of them are still young puppies.

Many stray dogs are living on the streets of Texas, and we need your support to save them. Why don’t you head to our Why Texas page to learn about our mission? If you wish to support us directly, our Donation page is Right HERE.

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