Veterinarian Eats in Cage for Scared, Sick Dog

ELBERTON, GA -- When veterinarian Andy Mathis first met Graycie, she was an emaciated, starving stray, suffering from anemia, dehydration and a painful prolapse.

His professional insights told him what needed to happen next. But his heart told him something different. So he turned to Facebook friends and colleagues for advice.

“Practical Me says I should put her to sleep,” he wrote, “but Veterinarian Me wants to try and give her a chance.”

The advice he got back would change everything for the scrawny, 20-pound pup.

“They responded, ’Try’,” he wrote on the Facebook page of his clinic, Granite Hills Animal Care in Elberton, Ga. “Especially, if she still has a will to live. Try.”

That was Friday, January 29.

Since then, Mathis, with the help of his staff and the veterinary school at nearby University of Georgia, has begun the long journey of nursing Graycie Claire -- named after her coloring and “a double name being Southern and all” -- to health.

He’s chronicled that journey with a series of photos and videos on the clinic’s Facebook page. And, in just a little over two weeks, the progress has been dramatic.

In a video from Saturday, which by Tuesday had been shared on Facebook more than 80,000 times and drawn more than 3,000 comments, Mathis sits cross-legged in Graycie’s pen, having his breakfast alongside her to help build back her trust in humans.

But that was after a lot of work had already been done.

On Facebook, Mathis writes that doctors at the university were initially able to get her temperature back up, temporarily reduce her prolapse and get her hydrated. Over the following week, she improved gradually, gaining a little weight in the process.

On Thursday, he spayed her to relieve the prolapse and discovered what appeared to be an infection in her uterus. Treating that, he said, would hopefully speed her recovery time.

Through a benevolent fund he’d already created in the name of a dog he rescued from the pound in 2011, Jimmy’s Fund, Mathis is accepting donations to help pay for Graycie’s care at the university animal hospital and elsewhere.

He’s hoping her story, which will continue to unfold on Facebook, will have a happy ending.

“Hopefully, she’ll learn to trust people quickly, and be ready for a home and family very soon,” Mathis wrote.