11/21/00 - 10/25/04

The Little Red Girl who had a heart as big as the great stallion whose name she shared

Photograph of cloud formation across the river from my home on New Year's Day, 2005. Can you see Racey with one of her paws resting on the mountain? I think she was checking up on Special.

Last night when I settled down to sleep, MaXX and Evilene were out romping around in the house, Mojo and Paddy went to bed in their crates, and Twinkle wanted to sleep in a kitchen crate too. I left Racey's crate door open in case she wanted a drink of water in the night, but I closed the gate between my living room and kitchen.

In the middle of the night, I was awakened by MaXX (who never sleeps with me - prefers to lay on the floor next to my bed) excitedly leaping on my bed. Evilene jumped up too and started bouncing around with MaXX. I was still kind of asleep and just wanted everybody to settle down. As they started finding their spots on the bed, I was touching noses, and realized there were three bodies squashing me into the bed. No mistaking MaXX's giant gum drop nose, nor Evilene's - and then I realized the third nose was Racey's. She snuggled right up to me and I drifted back to sleep with her head on my chest, stroking her neck and shoulders. My last thoughts before I drifted off were that I didn't realize that her beard had grown back that much (I had shaved her face in order to help feed her over the past weeks - and to keep her from getting too messy since she couldn't hold food in her mouth herself). I was very pleased that she was cuddling with me, because she was always a very aloof girl. She even kissed my chin before I fell back to sleep. But when woke up this morning, my bed was empty save for me.

The first thing I saw when I came into my living room was that the gate was still closed. I wondered how Racey, not a jumper by any means, and also being so weak, could have scaled it to get into my bed.

As I opened the gate and came into the kitchen, I peeked into Racey's open crate and found that my beautiful, courageous, and determined girl had crossed the Bridge sometime in the night. But she couldn't set off on her journey without coming to say good bye to me. And when her spirit came to my bed last night and snuggled up to me, her beard had grown back and she was sleek and fit feeling under my hand - I know that she left on her journey across the Rainbow Bridge fit and beautiful once again. I had hoped so very, very much that I could help her back to her old self - she was so beautiful. I can't describe how I feel about her coming to spend time with me as soon as her spirit was released. Whether it was a dream or a true spirit, it was so real. I could feel how warm she was. I could feel how cool and wet her nose was. And I just drifted back to sleep, cradling her in my arm, with her head snuggled on my chest. I'll never, never forget that

Since Saturday, she had not been agreeable about letting me feed her. Since yesterday, she had stopped drinking water. She was still following me around the house though, but the following was much slower. In the past couple of days, especially last night, she seemed more responsive to my voice than she had been in a long while. She spent a lot of time this weekend laying with her pups. The pups crawled over her and kissed her face and curled up next to her and napped. Over the weekend, all the older dogs were also very gentle and tender with her, walking up to her and gently touching her with their noses. Even MaXX, my Bull in a China Closet guy, deferred to her and would allow her to pass without knocking her down or even bumping into her.

I have a beautiful boy, Paddy, from a breeding between Racey and MaXX done two years ago.

Blackheath's War Admiral
"Paddy"

With hopes that I might get a bitch as beautiful as Paddy, I repeated an Artificial Insemination breeding between Racey and MaXX - because MaXX was so much bigger than Racey, and such an aggressive breeder.

About two or three weeks after the AI breeding, I came out to the kitchen in the middle of the night for a glass of water and found MaXX and Racey "tied". I was very upset. Shortly following this unscheduled breeding, she immediately began to go "down", and for the first couple of days I chalked it up to morning sickness - since I thought she was about 2-3 weeks pregnant at that time, it would be normal for her to experience slight lethargy, lack of appetite, and even vomit occasionally. This normally passes in just a couple of days. But by the fourth day of her not wanting to eat and having no interest in anything around her, I took her to my vet. It was already noticeable that she was beginning to lose weight.

All her blood tests were normal. Her temperature was normal. A smear was done for pyometra and was negative. He felt there was a possibility that she may have a bladder infection and this could be causing her symptoms, but we couldn't get a urine collection - so he started her prophylactically on a 10 day course of Clavamox. By the end of the ten days she had lost more weight and was still very depressed. I dropped her off at his office for an exam.

He called me a couple of hours later and said that everything was coming back normal and he was stumped. We talked for a few minutes and I told him about some of her recent behaviors, like, when the other dogs mob me and stand up for hugs and kisses, she would do a kind of half-assed happy dance in the background, but you could tell by the look in her eye, she didn't have a clue what the hell was going on. Or the fact that she would sit and stare at the floor for a hour without moving. He told me he'd run a couple more tests and get back to me.

A short while later he called me back and asked, "Did you know that she is blind?" What?? Apparently he had noted a large, black, discoid area at the back of her retina, and of course, our first thoughts were of melanoma.

I contacted an M.D. friend of mine who is a radiologist, and asked him if he could do an MRI scan of Racey's brain for me. He immediately agreed. When I took Racey in for her appointment, she was the hit of the office - heck - the entire medical building. My vet came for the testing, several of the doctors from adjoining practices came in to see the canine patient that was going into the people office. After the intravenous contrast was administered for the testing, Racey's problem was immediately apparent on the imaging - she had suffered a massive stroke. Because of it's proximity to the optic nerve, this was verified as the cause for her blindness as well.

This was good news and bad news. Good news because I knew she wasn't going to die of cancer in a blink of my eye, but bad news because I had no one to reference that had experience with a pregnant, stroked, blind dog. Just before the MRI scan, an ultrasound had been performed and this confirmed her pregnancy, indicating that she was carrying eight pups!

The size of the pups was concerning. They seemed small for dates. My vet suggested that it was the natural breeding that had succeeded, rather than the AI breeding - but this meant then that Racey was only about 3 weeks pregnant - and still had 6 weeks to go - getting weaker, and weaker by the day.

So now I am faced with the horrifying task of deciding between Racey or her pups. My vote was for Racey. We talked about options, but the methods available to terminate the pregnancy could cause further complications for Racey in her weakened state. My vet didn't think she'd last the next couple of weeks, and certainly would not complete the pregnancy.

Almost immediately after the stroke, she began to lose the ability to feed herself. At first we thought she was just not feeling good, but it became apparent that she had possibly lost the ability to feed herself, and that it may never return. She would try to eat, and if any of you have seen a horse that needs to have its teeth ground - you will know what happened to Racey - everything she put in her mouth just fell right out. In an effort to try to help her regain the weight she'd lost and keep up her strength, and not knowing if this inability would be permanent, I started "stuffing" her - rolling her food into small torpedoes, opening her mouth, and pushing the torpedoes down her throat - three times a day. She had no problem drinking water, but definitely developed a new weird way to accomplish that task.

Feeding times were very interesting - I could tell that she really was hungry and wanted her food. One morning, I took MaXX outside to feed him and put his dish on the patio. Racey walked up to him and shouldered him away so she could sniff his food. She apparently realized that it wasn't as special as what she was getting, so she walked over to the grooming table that I had been lifting her up onto to feed, and stood up to it, very clearly saying, "FEED ME!"

She started to regain weight (but by now she was down to 30 pounds from 42). One morning, about two weeks before her pups were due to arrive, she decided to "eat" her housemate, Evilene, who outweighed Racey by about 30 pounds - and Racey came out on top!

In spite of her blindness, she functioned around the house as she always had. She continued to follow me around the house, and spent a lot of time right next to me, and I mean right next to me, touching my legs nearly all day long. If I got up to move, she'd get up and shuffle right next to me.

Since I had not noted the date of the natural breeding, I was unsure of a due date for the pups. On a Tuesday morning in August, I noted that she had a thick discharge coming from her vulva. I thought, "This is it, she's losing her pups. Boy, I hope she can make it through surgery." I took her to Brad, who took one look a her and said, "I'm not feeling good about this, Terry." Brad called me a few hours later and said, kind of chuckling, "Come pick this amazing little girl up and take her home. She's not losing her pups - that was her mucus plug - she's in first stage labor!". I had been so focused on Racey, that I had actually disconnected from the fact that she was pregnant. After numbers of litters, of course I knew what a mucus plug was! Brad couldn't get over it. She was so thin you couldn't even tell she was pregnant.

A few days went by and still no pups. I called Brad again and he told me to bring her into his office the next morning for an ultrasound to see if it the pups were large enough that it would be safe to take them by C-section, since Racey had made it so far on her own. But he still cautioned that she would probably not withstand the birthing.

However, the next morning, I woke up to a whelping box full of pups. She did it all by her skinny little self in the night. They were cleaned up, warm, dry, and beautiful, normal-sized, healthy black and tans. This out of a little bitch that was now down to 21 pounds. However, within the next 24 hours, 3 of them began to fade and I just let them go.

During her pregnancy, I contacted an herbalist in Australia who recommended some drops for her. He recommended a diet of chicken, fish, cheeses, mixed with either rice or mashed potatoes to make the base for the torpedoes. He suggested I feed her raw. However, Racey just barfed up the raw stuff, so I ended up cooking everything and she had no problems with that. She also was given daily doses of antioxidants, proteins, and other supplements to help her regain her strength and stamina, and to try to help her gain weight.

Brad had told me to let her feed the pups no more than 20-30 minutes, no more than twice per day. Newborns need to be fed around the clock every four hours. Supplementation Time - Big Time! For nine days, around the clock, every four hours, I fed all five little furballs.

When I did this breeding with Racey, I did something I have only done one other time in 30 years of breeding. About three weeks after I bred Racey, I bred Evilene. For weeks after doing this, I had anxiety attacks like you wouldn't believe - waking up in the middle of the night thinking, "What the H*LL have I done? Two bitches in my house with litters at the same time - it will be a bloodfest!!".

Evilene caring for both litters

I don't believe in coincidences. If the artificial insemination breeding had been the one that "took", Racey would have been 5-6 weeks pregnant rather than 3 when she suffered the stroke. Evilene's pups would have been born about 5 weeks later. As it turned out, nine days after Racey' pups were whelped, Evilene delivered 7 pups of her own. One by one, I introduced Racey's pups to Evilene, and Evie sniffed them, licked them, and gently pulled them right in to her. Evilene went on to nurse all 12 pups. Evilene's breeding and subsequent litter made it possible for Racey's pups to grow normally and be strong and healthy.

This relieved Racey of the drain of feeding pups. She began to slowly gain weight. She started romping in the pasture with the other dogs. She started barking at people coming up my drive way. She chased my chickens with the other dogs through the pastures. But she still couldn't feed herself. For 14 weeks I have tried to help her recover, and she gave it her best Airedale try.

Racey's pups were 8 weeks old on 10/26/04. I think she waited just long enough to make sure they were all good pups and knew how to be true Airedales. Her daughter, very appropriately named "Special", who is the one I am keeping from this litter, has been using the dog door in my kitchen since she was 6 weeks old. She can climb in and out of the whelping box - and does so to go potty if she needs to go before I get up in the morning. She climbs through the wrought iron gate that separates my kitchen and living room, but does not go farther than the rug on the floor on the other side of the gate. Yesterday, she climbed through the gate and snatched up a soft teddy bear toy, and carried it back through the gate, giving it a couple of good yanks to get it through the bars, and then climbed into the whelping box with her prize, and took a nap. She has Racey's beauty and grace already at only 8 weeks of age. She will be my Special girl in her mother's place.

I purchased Racey as an 11-month old pup. She was very beautiful, but on the smallish side. She came to me having a registered name, but had only been called "Puppy" up to that point. After arriving home from the airport, I introduced her to my pack, one at a time, and they began running in the pastures together. After one afternoon of watching her out-distance her new housemates in Airedale tag games, there was no question what she wanted to be named - RACEY!

I purchased Racey as a show prospect, and ultimately did put 8 points on her, which was not an easy task. She was always very aloof and shied away from most people. She hated to be touched - and a couple of times actually "cow-kicked" at judges. It took quite a while for her to be comfortable living in our house. She was never fully comfortable with anyone other than me.

My son, who has grown up with these dogs, was forever crushed that Racey would never let him pet her. If he walked into the living room, she would stand up, look for the fastest means of escape, and literally leap the coffee table and sofa in one bound to get out of the room. A couple of years later, however, she started tentatively following him around, peeking into rooms where he was, but as soon as he noticed her, or looked like he was leaving that room, WHOOSH, she was outta there.

When I had her about four months, I put a trim on everybody for the winter. I noticed that she was a little on the thin side. I had been feeding everybody in a group, and figured someone had been nosing her out of her food, so I started feeding her alone. She still was losing weight. At that time she was just a little over a year old. I took her to my vet and he diagnosed a liver shunt. A liver shunt is an incurable (other than a several thousand dollar "liver transplant" kind of surgery) hereditary condition. I was devastated. I couldn't afford the surgery. I brought her home and decided to place her on the same medications an herbalist had given to me while I was on chemotherapy for a terminal cancer, to help keep my liver healthy, and keep her comfortable. Everyone's advice to me, including my vet's, was that if I couldn't afford the surgery (which may or may not have been successful), I should put her down. But she was fighting it so hard right with me, I just couldn't give up. It was touch and go for a few months, but she started to show improvement.

During that time I contacted the well-known animal communicator, Lydia Hiby. Racey told her that she was very uncertain as to how to act around humans. She told Lydia that her favorite color was hot pink. She told Lydia that she thought MaXX was handsome.

From that point on, Racey sported a hot pink scarf or collar. Her crate pad was even covered in hot pink. Her appetite began to return to normal and her weight improved. Her activity level increased. She began to play and bounce around the pastures like a normal juvenile Airedale Terrier girl, romping and frolicking at every chance.

As she was recovering, she'd lay in my lap at night while I'd watch TV and I would pick and pluck at her coat. Eventually, she was in a full show coat and was nearly back to normal weight (she went down to 24 pounds that time). Her appetite had continued normal, so I decided I would enter her in a local Terrier Specialty - she was so pretty, she deserved to be acknowledged. I took her to my vet for some blood tests to make sure that she wasn't being stressed by what I was doing. He laughed at me. He said, "I don't know what you have done for this little red girl, but I can tell by looking at her that she's not stressed! Go to the show and when you get back in town, we'll do some fasting blood tests."

So we went to the show. She didn't win, but she sure made a splash, and showed her little butt off for me.

Brad did the blood test when we returned and was blown away. It was normal. Boringly normal. And so was a second, and a third, and a fourth, repeated a couple of months apart over a period of 18 months. It was obvious that she had been misdiagnosed - or...a miracle had taken place? Who knows. At that point, the diagnosis was dropped to a "nonspecific hepatopathy, resolved." The cause of the infarction in her brain, or stroke, remains a mystery.

At any rate, I had another blood test done in January of 2003. It was also boringly normal. At that point I made the decision to breed her to my MaXX. She produced a beautiful litter of 1 girl and 5 boys in that breeding.

I originally sold her son, Paddy, to a couple who had never owned an Airedale. They were having a home built and asked if I would keep him until it was finished and I agreed. By the time they were ready for him, he was nearly 6 months old, and he and I were extremely bonded. I had spent a lot of time training him - he knew basic obedience commands, was totally housebroken, and was a joy to live with, not to mention stunningly beautiful - a perfect combination of the power and mass of his dad and the elegance, style, and grace of his mother. As fate works, his new owners sent him back when he was about 10 months. So now, Paddy lives with me again. And I decided to repeat the breeding that created him, to see if I could get a Special girl for me to keep.

You know the rest.

Racey's last day with me.

A silver lining in the clouds, though, was that in the last month or two, Racey has allowed my son to pet and cuddle her, something he had been dying to do since she came to live with us.

We laughingly referred to her as "Herself" She was so aloof and distant most of the time. Which is why when she came to lay with me yesterday night, it was such a special memory - I will never forget it.

I had to lay in bed for a few minutes when I woke this morning, not jumping up and running with my first step on the floor as my mornings usually start. I laid there for a bit and contemplated my recent loss, and Day 1 without Racey Mae, and missed my girl a bit more.

I took Racey in to Brad for cremation. He had seen her through the thick and thin of things. We both stood there petting her and talking about what a tough little gal she had been. And he said, "As a vet, not all your clients are memorable. But over the years, a few stick out for various reasons. I will remember this Little Red Girl because I have never worked with a dog that had as much heart as she did." Then, of course, we both started crying and hugging.

But on the way home, while recalling the nice things he said about her, I was reminded of something I had heard years ago when my son's dad and I raised thoroughbreds. When the horse Secretariat, (Big Red to his fans) died, they did an autopsy (see quote from Marriana Haun's book, "The X Factor: What It Is and How to Find It" below).

"As America held its breath watching the race on national television, the three-year-old Secretariat galloped away from the field to a 31-length victory to capture the third leg of the Triple Crown in the track record time of 2:24 for the mile-and-a-half Belmont Stakes. . . . Many who watched the race will long remember the announcer's amazed voice as he yelled, 'My God, he's going to lap the field!'"

"Sixteen years later, that breath-taking race was explained. Suffering from a severe case of laminitis, Secretariat had been humanely destroyed. As the mighty stallion lay on an autopsy table at the University of Kentucky, a group of research pathologists surrounded him. As the veterinary pathologists began to cut into the stallion, they made a ground-breaking discovery: They uncovered the largest heart ever found in a Thoroughbred racehorse, estimated at 22 pounds. The normal heart size of a Thoroughbred is 8.5 pounds. . . . University of Kentucky pathologist Thomas Swerczek . . . [said] 'The heart was what made him able to do what he did. . . . It would be almost impossible for a horse with a small heart to do that.' Another pathologist said that his heart explained the Belmont race."

Racey had the perfect name for a girl with a huge heart who gave it her all. There are no coincidences. Racey's heart made it possible for her to do what she did. I am not saying that her heart was physically huge, but certainly her spiritual heart was enormous.

When I picked Racey's ashes up from Brad on Wednesday, he had placed her hot pink leopard print collar and several locks of her hair in a small box for me.

Look for her star tonight - but you will probably have to look fast, because it will Race right across the night sky and over the Rainbow Bridge.

Special (and friend, Twinkle) at 14 weeks - with her favorite toy

Special's littersister, Belle, at 9 weeks.

Special's littersister, Roxy (and new friends, Austin and Anthony) at nearly 4 months.

Special's litterbrother, Sammy (and new friend) at 9 weeks.

Special's litterbrother, Dexter, at 9 weeks.

Special's "brother", Cooper, at nearly 4 months.

Special's "sister", Gracie, getting her first stripping (5 months)

Special's "sister", Chuy, at nearly 4 months.

Special's "brother", Toot, at nearly 4 months.

Special's "brother", Mulligan (and new friend, Jeremy) at 9 weeks.

Special's "brother", Indiana, at 10 weeks.