"Gracie"

There is a story behind our kennel. We fell in love with the breed in 1995 and after two years of research on it, we decided to go see one personally. We contacted several kennels that I had found mentioned in the books that I had gotten. It just so happened that it was the weekend of the dog shows in Indy (the ones in February -- around Valentines Day). We made arrangements to meet Jean of Leatherneck Bullmastiffs at her house on Saturday. We went to the dog shows on Friday and Saturday,looked at the breed, and then drove to Jean's. She had a puppy she had named Leatherneck's Grace Under Fire that she was keeping for herself. We met all of Jean's dogs.  Fell in love with them and they fell in love with Larry. We told Jean we would contact her as she really didn't want to sell Gracie, but 30 minutes from her house we had decided. Got ahold of her and she let us buy Gracie. She was the first bullmastiff we had, we had two Bichon Frises at home and they all got along fine.. She was the love of our life. In 2000 we decided after hearing the stories on free whelping, c-sections, that we didn't want to bred her, and run the risk of loosing her during the whelping process. She went in to be spade on 1/4/00 and she didn't recover from the anesthesia. We were devastated. We mourned and I told Larry we had to have another to get the SMILE factor back. We called Jean and asked her to put us on the list for another. She said she had her planned breeding of Bunny to Reggie sold, but since we were a good home, she would let us have her pick puppy. The breeding took place at the end of January 2000. We went to every dog show we could, Indy, Louisville, everywhere to get out Bullmastiff fixes until the litter was born 4/1/00. I already had the name picked out it had to be a fawn female (like Gracie) Leatherneck Mend My Brokn Hart, and we were going to call her Mendy or Mender. The problem was Jean called and said that since we loved the shows so much she had two really nice red males in the litter, would we want one of them?   So I gave in for a short period of time, and told him to get his big red male, but I was still getting my fawn female. He agreed......well we went up at 4 weeks to see the puppies, they all fell in love with Larry but one took his heart. In May when they were 8 weeks old, we went up and Jean had the two red males on the porch, no collars and asked us which one we wanted. We played with them for a long time, and decided on the Big one----Just like Larry (who had in the mean time bought a Big Red Dodge Dually Truck for his Big Red Boy---I'm so easy sometimes.....Leatherneck Red Storm Rising. Gracehart kennels is named for Gracie who has our heart. She is buried on our 24 acres, overlooking the pond she loved, She has an iron hanging marker, and a concrete heart with flowers over her site. I was on the list until 2001 for my fawn female to be born. It was a long year and half. But I got my Mender. Gracie started something in us. We love them all.

Jana & Larry Fisher