DALLAS — A stray, covered in fleas, and blind! Chester had three strikes against him. Well, four if you count being stuck in the shelter.

“He was just in really bad shape,” says Leslie Sans, executive director of Dallas Pets Alive! “It was ‘Bad News Bears’ for Chester.”

It gets worse. Chester is 10-years-old and that is really getting up there in dog years.

“He definitely found himself of the Euthanasia List,” says Sans. “Seniors just don’t do well in the shelter.”

But Dallas Pets Alive! spiffed him up and got him back in the game.

“We knew underneath all of those fleas and that grossness he could be back to a beautiful looking dog,” says Sans.

“He just has a sweet personality, he`s a sweet dog,” says one of his new owners Pam Pollock.

But his new owners were blindsided at first.

“When we’re in the kitchen cooking the other dog knows to get out of the way,” says Pollock. “(Chester) will just kind of stand there so you have to know how to work around him.”

But it didn’t take long for Chester to navigate things at his new “home plate”

“I just fell in love with him,” says another of his owners Chris Hockenberry. “We have a poodle and he`s a senior dog. We thought it would be good for him to have a friend.”

Sounds like this wily veteran has finally hit a “home run.”