BY Erica Pearson
DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITER
Saturday, February 13th 2010, 4:00 AM
Dog handler Wade Koistinen holds a Havanese named Rumor with the woman whose life he saved by giving her one of his kidneys, Sandy McCabe.
Watts/News
Dog handler Wade Koistinen holds a Havanese named Rumor with the woman whose life he saved by giving her one of his kidneys, Sandy McCabe.
Sandy McCabe would love for dog handler Wade Koistinen to lead her fluffy black-and-white Havanese to victory in Madison Square Garden.
But for McCabe, even a Best in Show at the Westminster Kennel Club show would pale next to what Koistinen has already given her – one of his kidneys.
“I’m just happy to be alive for this,” McCabe said Friday at the Pennsylvania Hotel, surrounded by borzois, bloodhounds and scores of other dogs and owners, all checking in before the show begins on Monday.
McCabe, 49, who breeds Havanese with her husband, Kevin, in rural Iowa, has diabetes and was facing renal failure last summer before her friend Koistinen told her he would help.
“I could just see her getting sicker and sicker. I had to,” said Koistinen, 51, holding McCabe’s entry in the show, Rumor, an outgoing little 4-year-old whose full name is Ch. Heartland’s Rumor Has It.
“I couldn’t walk more than 10 feet,” said McCabe, who was told that it would be four to six years before she climbed to the top of a national waiting list for kidneys. None of her family members was healthy enough to donate one.
But Koistinen, who lives in Kansas City, volunteered. “He stepped forward and said, ‘I will give my kidney,’” McCabe said.
The pair underwent tests at Minnesota’s Mayo Clinic last summer and found out that Koistinen was a perfect match. He persuaded doctors to do the transplant within a week.
Koistinen, who will first take to the ring with Rumor on Monday afternoon, seems modest about what he did. He lets McCabe do much of the talking, but proudly wears a green organ-donor wristband. McCabe had one too, until it had a run-in with one of her pups.
“My dogs chewed it,” she laughed.
epearson@nydailynews.com