Ready or Not?

Posted on July 08, 2004 by Sam Eifling 

MADISON, Wisc - Alex Washburn took the doctor's call around 3 o'clock Tuesday afternoon, standing among the long grass and wildflowers at the ESPN Great Outdoor Games Retriever Trial venue. It was good news: Not cancer.

If he could, Ready would run.

Washburn went to her kennel truck and lugged the five-year-old Labrador retriever out of the side. She tossed a duck decoy in front of him and told him to sit. Dave Opseth, another competitor, walked by and looked at Ready.

"He has lost a lot of weight," he said to Washburn.

"He looks good," she replied. "He's been on fluids all night."

The dog had seemed out of sorts the day before and Washburn had taken him to the veterinarian's office for tests. She had reason to suspect the worst. In January, Ready had a floating, malignant tumor removed from his side, and has spent much of the year on chemotherapy. Just 10 days before his Great Outdoor Games debut, he was diagnosed with Lyme disease, and between the illness, and the medications, the dog had barely eaten in the previous week. Washburn said he was 10 pounds slimmer than his fighting weight of 90 pounds.

The vet Monday pummeled his liver and spleen with needles, ran a catheter into him and held him overnight. Washburn picked him up at lunchtime Tuesday, before she had received the test results. If she had to scratch Ready, she wouldn't have run Ticket, the 2002 gold medalist and 2003 silver, because, she said, he's retired.

"It's hard enough to get here," Opseth said. "Then to have a dog go south on you."

But the doctors said they could find no evidence of cancer, and Washburn turned to watching the other competitors tackle the course. She worried mostly for her dog's stamina. Would he run out of gas? She would watch his eyes for fatigue. If she had to, she'd pick him up and walk him out herself.

Sick dogs can run to death in field trials, and Ready wanted nothing more than to run. After a night in the clink, he was about to burst. Before his run, he sniffed madly at the clover under his paws. He panted like a locomotive. He looked up at his handler and bounced against her leg.

"Sit!" she told him. "No. Sit down." She yanked his chain, once, hard, then rubbed the back of his neck.

When the time came, Washburn led Ready in front of the platform for the television crew, to the left of the hundreds of spectators in the bleachers. She fired shotgun blanks at the duck decoys that catapults tossed onto the hill to their right; a few yards in front of them; near the edge of a pond at the bottom of the hill before them; and into an overgrown hill beyond the pond. Ready studied. Then he ran through the grass with a sound like a plastic bag crumpling. He was flawless to the first two decoys, and needed only modest direction to the third. Washburn blew her whistle, and motioned. He brought back the third decoy and set out for the farthest fake duck.

He sped down the hill and straight into the pond. But he swam off-course. Washburn whistled, and motioned to her right. The dog scrambled around the far shore. Washburn whistled again, and motioned.

From the distance, Ready looked back, his tongue a pink dot against his black coat. He skipped off behind the hill. Washburn finally directed him back into the weedy hill, where Ready rummaged, was lost from view, and eventually emerged with the decoy, which he dragged back across the pond with his tail wagging. He was a cinch to a fifth and final decoy. The crowd applauded. But overall he had not been swift.

Washburn had no time to worry about her position. She took Ready straight to the vets' tent at the venue, where they stuck an IV of sodium chloride solution in his right front leg.

Washburn knelt at his side and scratched the matted black fur between his shoulders. When he had absorbed half the IV fluid, the vets wrapped Ready's leg with tape, which he immediately gnawed, and gave Washburn two fresh needles and the rest of the solution to squeeze into him later that night. Doggie bags don't come more serious.

Before the final standings were tallied, Washburn told the vets: "I think he's out. I screwed up. He's wild."

She blamed the medical drama for dulling her ability. "I'm just very tired," she said.

Then came the second happy revelation of the afternoon: Ready placed eighth, with 88 points. He was in the quarterfinals. Just barely. Ninth place went to Mike Shannahan and Marley, who scored 89.

"If there weren't so many people around, I'd smack you on the butt," sport organizer Justin Tackett told Washburn as the day wound down.

"I just screwed up," she said. "I handled so poorly."

"Who cares?" he replied. "As long as you advance."