When Lorie McCrone packed up her dogs and began the journey of more than 800 miles to French Lick, Ind., for the annual Dalmatian Road Trial, she was carrying on a 300-year-old tradition.

Dalmatians, those spotty bundles of wired energy popularized by Disney and beloved by American children, were actually bred to trot beside carriages as a safeguard for their upper-class masters inside.

While carriages are not a part of today's competition, McCrone trained her Dalmatians, Storm and Danny, in the same basic skills - obedience training, endurance and horse sense - that would be tested in the June 12 trial.

Storm, 10, placed second, with 591 of a possible 600 points; Danny, 8, was third with 587 points.

"They're senior citizens," said McCrone, the only

competitor of the 17 entrants in her division that was from central New York. "Most of the dogs in the trial were much younger- about 3 or 4, which is prime age for competing. In dog years, (Storm) is about 70 years old. So that's pretty neat that she's able to run 12.5 miles. But she was in better condition than Danny, even though she's older. I think that's so funny!"

Storm has had her share of health concerns, including epilepsy and blindness. About a month before they began training, Storm was attacked by another dog and underwent surgery at Cornell University.

"She and I are a lot alike," said McCrone with a laugh. "We both have a lot of problems!"

McCrone, a 44-year-old accountant for IBM, was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis (MS), a disease that attacks the central nervous system, in 1992.

Dealing with the illness was an almost unbearable task for McCrone. But the love and support of her husband, Joe, helped see her through the disease. The joy of caring for her canine companions gave her plenty of distractions.

"The Dalmatian is a very active animal," McCrone said. "They are bred to run for miles, but people buy them and stick them in a room and expect them to be happy. But you get home and they're bouncing off the walls because they really want to exercise a lot. So this type of exercise is perfect for them. We'll go 12 miles, and by the time they get finished, they're ready to be couch potatoes!"

Testy competition

There are two main stages to the road trial- obedience and endurance. The obedience competition tests for skills. The first is the ability to ignore distractions.

"The whole concept behind the road trial is that this is a nice dog that you can take out on a trail," McCrone said. "You don't have to worry about it running away. You don't have to worry about it bothering the horse or meeting something on the trail and running after it. So they would set up a distraction. (People) would come toward you, walk past you and keep on going and the dog couldn't go after that distraction."

The competition also tests the dog's ability to "hock." The dog must stay within a 15-foot radius of the master, who is on a horse. The dog cannot distract the horse by running in front of it or around its legs.

Finding the right horse to train for this test can be difficult. McCrone began with Tango, a 26-year-old quarterhorse belonging to her next door neighbor, Candi Yatsinko.

"He was rock-solid," McCrone said. "He didn't care what happened around him. The dogs were bouncing off of him, treats were hitting his flank and he just didn't care."

Over the last year, McCrone and her dogs worked with Frolic, another mild-mannered horse that didn't mind the sometimes-manic dogs, but neither horse accompanied the McCrones to the competition. Instead, the French Lick Resport Stables provided a horse that was more familiar with the terrain and humid temperatures, which peaked at 97 degrees.

The basic skill of "sit and stay" was also tested in the obedience portion of the competition.

"You have to get them confident that I won't let the horse step on them," McCrone said.

There is also a speed test, during which the horse trots, then speeds up to a gallop. The dogs must follow closely, never falling behind or passing the horse.

To prepare for these tests, McCrone developed a "click-and-treat" system for Storm and Danny. Whenever one of them did something good, such as running the appropriate distance from the horse, McCrone used her hand-held clicker. The sound was followed by a treat - a biscuit of dehydrated chicken homemade by McCrone - that let the dogs know that they were doing something right.

The toughest part of the road trial was the endurance test, McCrone said. The horse, rider and dogs had to complete a 12-1/2-mile course in three hours. There are three health checks during the competition to ensure that the dogs and horses are not in danger.

A dog that exhibits health problems, be it a high temperature or injured paw, is removed from the competition. McCrone and her crew finished the course in two hours and 53 minutes.

"Because of the hills, you had to make up time by cantering up the hills and slowly walking down the other side because it was so steep," McCrone said. "It was a really tough course."

A tougher battle

That path may have been rough, but it was nothing compared to the journey McCrone took to get there.

After being diagnosed with MS nearly eight years ago, McCrone has had to withstand symptoms ranging from a tingling sensation in the legs to partial blindness and paralysis. Each relapse, a period of time when symptoms suddenly worsen, brings something new- memory loss, extreme fatigue and so on.

"With each relapse, you're going to have different types of symptoms," McCrone said.

"I was on my way home from work one time and all of a sudden I was in the middle of Binghamton and I didn't know where I was," McCrone said. "It's like a moment of amnesia- you don't have any idea where you are. Sometimes you have very bad symptoms and you can't even walk. Sometimes you have no symptoms at all and feel completely normal."

For McCrone, the problems intensified with the heat in the summer, quite a problem for a woman whose spent those hot summer days working out with her dogs.

"That was very upsetting for me," McCrone said. "I was very active with the dogs, but the MS stopped me from doing that. The agility (training) is very active. You run the dogs through an obstacle course. When you have MS, you're lucky to get out of bed, much less run an obstacle course."

McCrone struggled with the illness for about six years years, trying out numerous medications and treatments. Finally, she decided to try out the drug Betaseron.

"I went back and forth for about six months, because there are some side effects and you have to give yourself injections," McCrone said. "But I decided to try it because I had too many symptoms that were not going away fast enough. Within two months, all my symptoms went away. It doesn't work the same for each person. I think I'm very, very lucky that it's worked so well for me.

The side-effects for McCrone were flu-like symptoms and what she called, "just not feeling well," which lasted about two weeks. She hasn't had an MS relapse in more than a year.

Now, instead of spending her time in bed or in the hospital, McCrone can be found at Platinum Stables in Port Crane, where she trains with her dogs and Frolic. McCrone said that without the understanding of Tracey Harrington, the manager of Platinum Stables, competition would have been impossible. Harrington arranged for McCrone to lease Frolic, one of 43 horses on the 200-plus-acre establishment, and even offered to send Frolic to Indiana for the competition.

"This is the first time I've ever had anything to do with something like this," Harrington said. "It's worked out well. She's a really, really nice person. The MS doesn't seem to affect her. She just goes and goes. (She's here) just about every day, rain or shine."

A dream comes true

For McCrone, training with Storm and Danny is a pleasure, not a chore. And to the McCrones, the dogs are more than just pets- they're family.

"We don't have any children of our own," McCrone said as she lovingly rubbed Storm's velvety coat. "They are our children."

The family recently got a little bit bigger with the arrival of Sera, a 9-week-old Dalmatian puppy the McCrones purchased from a breeder in Kansas after an intensive Internet search.

"Because of the movie 101 Dalmatians, many breeders are not breeding now because many people overbred them," McCrone said. "People just don't realize that they have a lot of genetic problems."

Among other physical problems, Dalmatians are prone to deafness and epilepsy, both conditions that afflict Storm. The McCrones wanted to make sure that Sera wouldn't have the same ailments, so they found a breeder, who conducted thorough physical testing. After waiting nearly a year, their healthy new "daughter" was born. The McCrones decided to call her Sera, a shortened form of "Special Thanks to Betaseron," in honor of the medication that changed their lives.

McCrone was concerned that she might not be in top condition when the competition came. So the good folks at the Dalmatian Club of America, which sponsored the event, arranged for McCrone to use a cart in the competition, if necessary.

McCrone began intensive training in April and by the time the event came around, she was symptom-free and ready to compete.

There is still no cure for multiple sclerosis, which affects nearly 350,000 Americans, but McCrone refuses to let the disease control her life. She continues to train with Storm and Danny practically every day. Sera tags along, too, because McCrone is already making plans to compete again in three years.

"Sera's our road trial Dalmatian of the future," McCrone said. "2003 Ohio, here we come!"