Chelsea's Story

I thought I would end the week, with a special Rescue Story, This is the story of Chelesa, She was Judi's Yorkshire Terrier and my daughter's first doggie love. It is a special story to me and one that I love. I hope that you enjoy it to. Now on to Chelsea's Story Chelsea, a 2.7 lb female Yorkshire Terrier, first came into my life in October 2002, one month after her 10th birthday. Not a lot is known about her life prior to that date as she never really liked to talk about it. When asked she would sweetly say “If I tell you, it will make you cry.” From what I understand Chelsea lived the first 10 years of her life with two black cats in an apartment in NY City with a lady who was Bi-polar. For reasons known only to her, she decided to sell all her belongings and take the animals and move to Florida. The man she paid to take them to Florida took the money and dumped them in a crack house in Washington, D.C. where they were held captive for a month. She escaped and finally made it to Florida where she was hospitalized (on suicide watch) but begged them to please rescue the animals. This went back and forth across the internet rescue groups with no one willing to go into this area to rescue these animals. There was one rescuer in Griffin, GA who had a friend whose husband was a cop in Washington D.C. and all agreed to help if she received the animals and the owner relinquished all claims. The crack house was found, finally the animals were located in terrible shape in a cardboard box, up to their bellies in feces, almost dead. Little Chelsea only weighed 1.5 lbs and her organs were already shutting down. Through great care she recovered and eventually made it to Griffin where later she was moved through 4 foster homes. But because she had incontinence problems, was old, developing cataracts, and was pretty much a couch potato, no one wanted her. This is where I came in. I tend to inherit the old ladies that no one wants and thus we took Chelsea. The two black cats remained in Griffin where one later died of old age and the other still loves with her rescuer..

Chelsea stood barely 6" high

The moment she entered the house it took her about 5 minutes to find the kitchen and the food bowl. She then located the nearest pillows and made herself at home. For the first six months she lived in her own little world. She often had nightmares or was terrified when strangers entered the house. The first night I made her a bed in the corner of our room and around 2:00 a.m. I heard the most horrible sound like a cat screaming in pain. I pulled my fingernails and toenails out of the ceiling, jumped out of bed, flipped on the light and there stood Chelsea looking up at me. I asked “Was that you?” and she replied “Yes-may I have a drink, please?” Chelsea never barked, but she could sure make cat sounds! The vet discovered that while in the crack house they apparently had blown cocaine up her little nose and she was drug addicted. It took several months for her to detoxify. My vet did not think she would live for more than six months. She would wake up around 7:30 a.m. and go out to potty, then normally it was back to bed until I would get her up at 11:00 a.m. then back to bed until around 2:00 p.m. and then it was eat until around 5:00 p.m. when she would take a nap until 7:00 p.m. then eat until around 10:00 p.m. and then it was off to bed. During that first six months we changed the food 3 times trying to find food that she could eat. Chelsea ate with the side of her mouth, picking the food up with her lips, throwing it up toward the back of her throat, actually catching 1 out of 5 pieces, eating it and then starting over. Needless to say the kitchen floor received most of her efforts. Chelsea's food bowls are 3" in diameter. When I asked her why she ate that way she responded in her Chelsea way “That’s the way I eat!” So after a trip to the chiropractor’s we found that Chelsea had obviously been hit more than once and that her atlas was so far out that she could not straighten her head. Several treatments later she ate with the front of her mouth, but never stopped tossing the food. Although my other two dogs tried to make friends with her, she was a loner. When you let her out to go potty she walked down the steps, down the concrete driveway and then directly out into the asphalt street - if you did not stop her. She was obviously used to going down steps, down a sidewalk and doing her business on an asphalt parking lot. More than once she got lost and would end up at the neighbor’s house or across the street. We tried to watch her every minute, but she was quick and quiet and the color of the winter grass and brown leaves. I will never forget the night that she somehow got out without anyone seeing her slip through the door and was gone for over an hour before we knew she was not in the house and we searched from 7:30 p.m. until 10:45 p.m. before we found her. There was a cold front coming in and the temperature dropped from in the 70’s to in the 30’s during that time period. I found that you cannot find any animal when you are hysterical yourself. In our neighborhood our lots are around an acre each and the road curves with storm drains with openings large enough for a 10 lb dog to easily walk into. If she had stayed on the main road she would have ended up on a horribly busy road. My conversation (which took place around 10 pm when I was too tired to be still be hysterical) with her went something like this “Chelsea where are you” “ Chelsea lost” “What are you doing?” “Chelsea just walking and walking” “ What do you see?” “ Houses” “ Are you okay?” “ Chelsea cold” At least I knew she was still alive and still in the neighborhood. When we finally found her, she had been walking the entire time and had walked the pads off her feet which were bloody. It was rare if Chelsea ever left the yard again after that. She refused to leave the porch unless you sat on there while she went into the yard and if the door blew shut she would freak and tear back to the porch. I never forgave myself for that terrible night. A dear friend of mine had a little four pound Yorkie named Buddy, whom she had rescued from a puppy mill, who stayed with us whenever they traveled. The other dogs (2 larger Yorkies-Buddy's mate and son and a Chihuahua) stayed with the house sitter but she was always afraid for Buddy since he was so tiny. So Buddy came to stay with us and he loved my guys. About six months after Chelsea had come, Buddy came to stay for a week and it was great seeing them meet for the first time as neither had ever seen another Yorkie their size. They stood almost the same height; Buddy had shorter legs, bigger body and outweighed her. They stood nose to nose and the following conversation took place. “Hi, my name’s Buddy, who are you?” “I’m Chelsea and I’m a cat.” (It had never crossed our minds that she did not know she was a dog – having been raised with cats) “You can’t be, you look like me and I’m a dog” said Buddy. The argument proceeded for several minutes and then it just stopped. I never knew if they just agreed to disagree or decided they could never change the other’s mind, but Chelsea went off to her bed as usual, but Buddy would have none of that. He was in love and he stayed with her constantly. She rolled her little lip, hissed, fussed and fumed, but he did not care. That week Buddy brought Chelsea back into the world and for the first time we met the real Chelsea. The week after Buddy went home, each evening at exactly 8:30 p.m. Chelsea would come into the living room and jump up and down in front of me making these funny little barking attempts while saying “Fix me, fix me” and then run to the kitchen with her little stub of a tail straight up and her little bottom just bouncing. I did not even know she had a tail before that as it was always tucked in. I would go to the kitchen and she would be in front of the stove again saying “Fix me, fix me.” The first night I cooked her some hamburger and she ate it. The next night she refused the hamburger, but ate some chopped up pork chop. Each night she refused what she had the previous night and wanted something new. After 6 nights of this I went onto one of the communications lists and requested that someone PLEASE converse with Chelsea and find out what I was missing. Well typical as it is a beginner as well as professional lists, I got responses like she had lost her favorite toy (Chelsea never played with toys), she wanted her bone (never chews on bones – not enough teeth) and then finally someone contacted me off-list and said she had 5 Yorkies and “Congratulations – you have a perfectly normal Yorkie and this is called Yorkie Games!” She said they will do this as long as you will play. That if I did not want to play to tell her that her food is I the kitchen and to go eat. That it might take a couple of nights, but she would give up – and low and behold it worked!

After that, we had a different dog in the house. Chelsea demanded her own! She loved to eat and got all the way up to 3.1 lbs! She loved to travel and go for long walks. Liked to be cooked for but was happy with really good canned food. Everything was a new experience and she was a wonderful traveler. She would help me with workshops and was a great communicator. I learned a tremendous amount from her. Toby is a little 4 lb male Maltese who had never marked in the house. When he was 4 a client brought a little dog by for me to see how well he was doing since we had managed to get him to stop biting and had saved him from being put down. He had been a rescue and she had decided to adopt him and she wanted me to meet him in person after having conversed with him long distance. The first thing he did was hike his leg on the couch. Although I cleaned the area thoroughly it set off Toby and from that day forward he marked everything!!! His favorite was the wooden table by the front door, plastic bags, cardboard boxes and a basket that sat in front of the fireplace hearth that was made like a little bear with the body out the back and the feet out the front. One day when I was cleaning and spraying Febreeze I looked back and he was following me dribbling on everything, when I asked what he thought he was doing he informed me “That stuff stinks!”. “Well, do you think you smell better than this does” I asked. “Absolutely” he stated. “Well if I catch you peeing in the house one more time I am going to tie it in a knot in it and you will never be able to pee again!” His eyes got big as circles and I thought I had finally made an impression. I have not used Febreeze since but I should not have threatened him as he became real sneaky-and I have not ever CAUGHT him again, but he is still marking! He can come in the room with you, stand right beside you, wonder back ut of the room and you look down and he has peed! Then the girls decided it was their job to tell on him when they found where he had peed. One day Chelsea came running into the kitchen yelling “Momma, Toby peed, Toby peed.” I asked her where and she immediately ran to the front door to show me. When I got there and found the spot it was a little circle about the size of a nickel. I said “Excuse me Chelsea, but that looks like a Chelsea spot to me.” “Huh-uh, Toby peed, Toby peed” she said as she took off to the other room laughing as she went. She had a delightful sense of humor and a wonderful laugh. The only way she ever learned to play was if we would clap our hands and chase her through the house and she would run in front us laughing. Her favorite thing to do was lay on my lap while I was at the computer. During my workshops I would have the participants converse with my guys and have them ask Chelsea about her life in hopes that she would one day enlighten us about her life before she came to live here. The lady she was conversing with said she thought Chelsea must have been a cat in her previous life because she told her she used to be a cat, but now she was a dog. I told her no, that Chelsea was talking about this life as she thought she was a cat before she came to live with use, but now she she knows she is a dog. One day while playing the piano and singing I heard this horrible noise like a dog in excruciating pain and I looked down and Chelsea was between my feet with her head thrown back howling loudly. I immediately apologize "Oh Baby, I'm sorry, was I hurting your ears?" When indignantly she answered "I's singin'!" and from the day on she would always join me at the piano and sing, but only when I sang. If I just played she totally ignored me. But no matter when I sang, she would throw back her heard and sing at the top of her lungs. Chelsea never got over her incontinence problems and with age it got much worse. When she was 12 the cataract in one eye became so bad that the eye went white and she lost all vision in it. One day I had taken her out in the front yard to potty (she could not longer maneuver the steps to the deck in the back yard) and I got sidetracked pulling weeds in the flower garden when I suddenly became aware-no Chelsea. I started calling her and heading toward the street when I looked up the street and saw Chelsea being guided back down the street by Toby. He was gently pushing her out of the street while steering her towards the driveway and home. From that day on he assigned himself the job of Chelsea’s protector and it was at that time that I realized that Chelsea could no longer see out of her good eye either at least not in direct sunlight. Over the following month she lost the ability to see period. She would often get up during the night and get lost, would get in the wrong room or upstairs and not know where she was, but Toby was always right there to make sure she was alright. Each morning and several times a day he would poke her gently with his nose to wake her up and make sure that she moved and would get up to go outside. In September 2004 the month of her 13th birthday, Chelsea began to loose weight and although she was at the vets many times and we tried several things, she continued to go down hill. Then in November I noticed that she had a loose tooth which of course had to be removed. The vet twilighted her to remove the tooth, but found that her jaw bone was infected and had to put her out to scrape it and remove the other affected teeth. She recovered well, but 3 days later had a stroke which left the right side of her mouth paralyzed and she could not eat. Her weight had dropped to 1.7 lbs. We started syringe feeding her and she fought her way back. The vet told me to make sure she took at least four 12cc syringes each day – well she took 8! I could not fill her up. She ate 6 times a day and would jump up and down and demand to be fed. Our Chelsea was back with a vengeance! I kept telling her that if she wanted to live to be twenty, I would continue to feed her that way, it was fine with me. In February, when our grandbaby was so ill and in the hospital having surgery twice, and then we were all so ill with that horrible bacterial infection, Chelsea had another stroke. Again she recovered, but this time it left her with what acted like severe arthritis. Her hips were protruding and she was in pain. I did everything I could, energy work, vitamins, hormones, herbs, I even changed her to baby food to get her to eat- all hid in those syringes, but she continued to go down hill. I even tried Remedyl – I was desperate. The end of April we were planning our bi-annual vacation to the North Carolina mountains and Chelsea loved the mountains. I knew that her time was drawing near, but I refused to admit it. She was happy about going and she even tried to go for walks the first few days, but as the week went on, it was obvious that Chelsea was leaving. On May 1, Chelsea had her third her stroke and this time lost control and wet her bed. She told me it was time and I was to let her go only giving her light and love to help with her crossing, but not to try and save her. Over the next couple of days she lost control of other body functions, but being the grand old lady that she was she wanted to go at home. We returned home on May 3 and Chelsea left this world quietly and with dignity at 9:00 a.m. on May 4, 2005. Many of you conversed with her during workshops and know what a great sense of humor she had/has. Always in control she left this world in total control of the situation. She was the absolute delight of my grandbaby who loved her dearly.

Toby looks blind in the above picture but it is actually just light reflection.

He has had great difficulty with her passing as he feels that he somehow failed her and it has taken lots of energy work and Bach Rescue Remedy to help him release her and know that he did his job well and he stayed with her until the very end, still gently prodding her trying to wake her up. He cried for days because we put her in a box. Buddy, who was accidentally stepped on and killed several years ago, was here to get her and take her across the bridge. In case you are wondering – no animal ever crosses alone! There is always at least one animal there to meet and greet and often a human loved one also. In Chelsea case both Buddy, whom she loved, and Rags (who belonged to a dear friend in Atlanta), who now works in that capacity, were with Chelsea for at least 3 days prior to her crossing. Buddy took Chelsea by his Momma's to show her that Chelsea was with him and she knew before I ever called her to tell her that Chelsea had passed. If any of you would like to converse with her, please do so and if you would, I would so love to have you share those communications with me. And a special thank you to Sandy Roberts in Griffin, Ga for bringing this special little girl into our lives. This is the third little old lady that we have adopted and the other two we managed to keep for 4 years, little Chelsea managed 3 years 8 months.