It amuses me that all of our adopted greyhounds, including every foster greyhound, romp and run with more exuberance when we clap for them as they circle the infield I lovingly call a butterfly garden.

I’ve met plenty of people who’ve gone the greyhound adoption route and said the same thing about their new forever friend. A few even say their retired greyhound won’t run at all unless someone is applauding the effort.

This just cracks me up.

Greyhounds as pets are so laid back and easygoing, and yet they know how and when to ham it up for an audience. We know they love to run period, and applause isn’t required if my greyhounds are out there running or romping together, but if we’re watching we’re expected to be active spectators.

You’d think Bandit, product of an ‘oops litter’, who only spent the first 8 weeks of his life at the track with his mother, would be different.

Surprisingly enough, he isn’t.

Though he never spent a single moment on a track in front of a crowd, he likes us to clap and cheer if we are outside when he bursts into a frenzy of laps around the yard.

Even during fetch lately he clearly has a bigger ‘smile’ and will take a victory lap (or two) if I clap for him as he’s bringing that poor dingy toy back to me.

You can’t really call it a genetic thing, unless there is a gene for showmanship. Although with the breed-wide consistency it makes you wonder what goes on in those bright greyhound minds.

Maybe it’s just something inherent that makes a retired greyhound want to work the ‘crowd’. I know it works for me as I smile, cheer, applaud and otherwise enjoy all the delightful quirks of our youngest, happy retired greyhound.

Live the greyhound adventure!

Brody is currently the grumpy ‘old man’ of the house, but when he was just over two years old, he came to us as part of our local adoption group’s foster program. The greyhound foster coordinator had barely put the leash in my hand before my daughter declared, “We’re keeping this one!”

That poignant story is just one of many personal anecdotes included in the Adopt A Greyhound Guide that is currently being re-formatted for an upcoming release to kindle.  I’m very excited about having the book available on kindle and I had fun creating a ‘second edition’.

The Adopt a Greyhound Guide!

The Adopt a Greyhound Guide has always been for the dogs…as well as for the people who work tirelessly in greyhound rescue and adoption groups to match greyhounds with forever homes.

Written for people who want to get to know the beautiful, fast friends that are retired racing greyhounds, the Adopt a Greyhound Guide is a charitable effort, with 50% of all proceeds going to help support greyhound rescue and adoption.

As I went through the book again, I thought about one of Brody’s quirky habits. He always stood over the foster greyhounds he liked. Sure it’s a stretch, but give me a little latitude here, could it be that he started this little quirk because of how our daughter first embraced him?

Yes, I know he’s ‘just’ a dog and I have a tendency to humanize the pet behavior around here. (goes with being a fan of retired greyhounds combined with the fiction gig). But I also know greyhounds are some of the smartest, most intuitive creatures on the planet.

He’s had a bond with our daughter since that very first moment. There have been rare occurences when he thought she needed help and he interceded to the point of growling and putting himself between her and the perceived threat. Just fyi, that’s not typical greyhound behavior.

From the moment we met Brody, we have discovered he is unique in all things. He’s forever breaking the standard ‘greyhound rules’. Probably another reason the two of them get on so well, as my daughter is forever breaking free of expectations and limits to reach her goals.

Please stay tuned for news of this book coming to a kindle or kindle app near you.

Live the greyhound adventure!

Our adopted greyhounds love people. They love having visitors. It’s like Christmas when visitors come to the house and even better when visitors bring wrapping paper (with or without a present inside).

Brody used to be the first to the door, but he’s older now, so he lets the annoying whippersnapper, Bandit, and the queen, Boo, handle the initial greetings these days.

While our adopted greyhounds have pretty good manners, a visitor means they get to show off all their cool skills. Usually all at once.

Skills? Sure, skills like the vertical leap or ability to kiss a visitor’s face.

Brody used to teach all of our foster greyhounds to be exceptions to the general rule of ‘no barking’. With adopted greyhounds there are always brief bursts of happy roo-roo-roo-ing, but Brody has taught many a foster to use their voice more frequently. My apologies.

Boo wasn’t obnoxious about jumping. Oh, she’d bounce around a bit when the leash came out, but it wasn’t a problem. Then Bandit came on the scene.(he taught her to like ice cubes too, a much more manageable habit). When Bandit would jump (and sort of get away with it) Boo started jumping too. This greyhound girl has a heck of a vertical leap for an average size greyhound, and lately most of our guests are seeing it for themselves.

(Recently a female greyhound set the world record for best vertical with 15 feet. But she doesn’t live with us).

No, don’t cancel your visit to our domestic petting zoo just yet…

Does she listen to the commands? On a good day, yes, but it’s a hard skill to practice without encouraging the jumping in the first place.

Now Bandit is tall enough on his back legs to kiss my 6’2″ son on the face. While we’ve finally managed to train him to calm down fairly quickly when visitors arrive (admittedly it’s more about him aging out of the hyper-puppy stage than our training skills) if the visitor is male, he goes into his super happy mode.

With smaller kids, he’s very gentle, but with adults, he fights the urge to be obnoxiously boisterous. Bandit wants to behave, really, truly.

I believe all three of our adopted greyhounds want to behave. It’s not just a fantasy. I think they know showing off good manners makes me happy and is just as valuable as showing they can talk, jump, and give you hugs and kisses.

Live the greyhound adventure!

Through 20 plus years of adopted greyhounds and foster greyhounds, I’ve developed some pretty solid opinions of these incredible dogs. I love them – fine I’m better labeled an adopted greyhound addict – and their many quirks and unique personality traits amuse me.

Adopted greyhounds are sight hounds, which is a rather obvious way of saying they are visual animals. They hunt, or race, when something catches their interest. The fake rabbit at the track, the squirrel or bird in the back yard, the cat across the street. Doesn’t matter what, doesn’t even matter if you see it, when an adopted greyhound sees it, they want to race off and explore.

Adopted greyhound, Bandit, eyeing a squirrel.

Unlike scent hounds who explore their world primarily with their noses, sometimes our adopted greyhounds or foster greyhounds have to be shown where a bit of treat or food has fallen. That’s a moment when I’m sure the sight thing is only for curiosities in motion.

And while most dogs possess better hearing than people, we’ve had a few adopted greyhounds who’ve made me wonder which sense is stronger: sight or hearing.

Levi could hear my husband’s car about two blocks away and would wait patiently at the door for Daddy to walk in.

While Brody and Boo perk up at opening of the garage door (even after we replaced the openers with quieter versions); most recently it’s the puppy Bandit who shows serious ”ear’ hound promise.

Like Levi, Bandit is an adopted greyhound in our pack who perks up long before my husband’s car even appears on the street. What’s more impressive? He does the same thing regardless of which car my husband is driving. (not that we have so many, but still, I’ve never seen that before).

Plenty of mini-vans and sedans of similar color go by on our street every day and Bandit ignores them…until it’s his Daddy’s car.

Odd? Sure, but I promise you it’s absolutely true. I think his super-hearing is quite an accomplishment for an adopted greyhound who’s primary genetic strength is visual acuity.

Live the greyhound adventure!

When I wrote the Adopt a Greyhound Guide, I had to go through all of our notes on our greyhound foster dogs, looking for the typical, the fun, the goofy, and the informative. In general, I was looking for the all-around best experiences to share with people interested in adopting retired racing greyhounds.

And I was immensely grateful for my weird habit of keeping notes on the greyhounds we foster.

In a recent conversation, I tried to list, just off the top of my head, all the greyhounds we’d fostered in the years following the rather calm era of Bubbles and Kayla. Without my list I overlooked a few. You might think they all run together (pun intended) but every greyhound is so unique that it’s fun to look back and think about what stands out with each of them.

Like Sadie, the sweet girl who loved to watch herself in any available reflective surface. Or Hank, the first greyhound we’d fostered who sported the white blaze on his face that you see pictured so often.

Of the many greys who’ve traveled through our home, only four were mainly white.

There was the foster greyhound who got the bloody nose chasing a squirrel through the wisteria in the yard. And the little female who was so happy romping and racing with Brody and Faith that she didn’t notice when one of her toenails came right out of her foot.

There was the very special foster who recognized me when I came to pick him up when his adoption failed. Brody and Faith welcomed him home as if he’d only been gone an hour rather than six months. He stayed with us for the rest of his days.

There was the panic when the gate had been left open and the foster greyhound who didn’t know her new, retired name got loose. And the foster greyhound who stole a wisk from the kitchen set of a morning tv show while we were live during a greyhound adoption awareness spot.

That’s no where near all of them, but it’s so fun to realize every foster greyhound has given us uniquely memories amid all the typical fun of teaching Retirement 101 to greyhounds finished with racing life.

Live the greyhound adventure!

Right or not, Bubbles was our first greyhound, a wedding present to ourselves, and our first child. In mostly blissful ignorance we were matched with her by a man who found greyhound rescue to be a hobby that was just as rewarding, but more affordable than flying.

We didn’t know much about the breed, but we eagerly listened to everything that experienced greyhound rescuer told us. We got our greyhound education primarily through one chance meeting at a vet and the greyhound adoption coordinator’s storytelling.

Our experience with Bubbles soon added to our knowledge base and we were fortunate that Bubble’s vet had significant knowledge of a breed that was a fairly rare pet at the time.  (It was somewhere just shy of a hundred years ago.)  ;)

I can only assume the greyhound rescuer knew more about us and our lifestyle than we did. Bubbles was the perfect adopted greyhound for us and from the day of her adoption to the day she succumbed to osteosarcoma twelve years later, she was the perfect ambassador for retired greyhounds and the wonders of greyhound adoption.

Kayla, our second greyhound, adopted us. We’d intended to just help out and foster her for a couple of weeks. She’d been surrendered during a meet and greet and she was stressed out and suffering physically. But she liked it at our place, Bubbles eventually approved, and she had a few great years with us before the prior years of neglect caught up with her.

Faith was the adopted greyhound we inherited when we found ourselves in the uncomfortable stage of not having a dog for the first time in all the years of our marriage. To be honest, it made me a little twitchy not having a greyhound keeping me company. Faith was an absolute blessing, much like her racing name: Faithful Message. With her, we officially entered the world of fostering for our local greyhound rescue and adoption group.

That was a journey our family fell in love with. Sure there are challenges, but watching a dog learn about the world – and enjoy that world – is so very gratifying.

Yes, the kids cried when we transferred our first foster greyhound to his new family. On the way home, our 10 year old daughter proclaimed we would keep the next one. On February 13th, Brody arrived with a cute little heart shaped patch of white on his neck and our daughter considered it a confirmation of her proclamation. He’s been keeping us on our toes ever since.

Brody is the clear exception to the ‘adopted greyhounds don’t bark’ rule and he has happily taught foster after foster how to properly vocalize the joy of retirement. A few of the foster dogs Brody ‘corrupted’ have found permanent homes with us (Levi, Boo, Bandit) and many more greyhounds have been adopted to forever homes.

Live the greyhound adventure!

Adopted greyhounds make greyt pets! Learn more at the Adopt A Greyhound Guide!

It seems Boo has her own seizure dog. After fourteen days, we’d grown more hopeful that she was a one and done sort of seizure patient. I wouldn’t say we were complacent, but every day without a seizure had become a small victory for all of us. Even Bandit had started to allow her out of his sight more often.

Then another grand mal seizure struck.

She’d just started going under, her mouth foaming, her back legs sliding on the hardwood in the hallway. She didn’t make any noise, other than the scrabbling of toenails on the floor.

Bandit reached her almost as quickly as I did, flying down the stairs and immediately doing his best to comfort her. The vet told us stimulation is ideal, and timing the seizure is important. So and tending Boo became a team effort, involving the whole family as well as the dogs and the bravest of our two cats.

Together, we waited out the seizure and when she was finally back, Bandit helped keep track of Boo the rest of the afternoon. Although when they went outside together, I had to remind him she needed more quiet rather than wild romping time. I think he was just excited she was up and sort of normal again.

It was harder to keep her quiet after this seizure, she paced the house, checking out every doors, window, and corner like a foster greyhound fresh from the track. Again, once he understood what I wanted, Bandit helped out. He helped corral her into our bedroom and flopped onto the bed, keeping her settled up there for about an hour.

All of us were grateful for his help. I think even Brody appreciated the whippersnapper stepping up, since he’s not really fond of pacing for any reason other than a walk these days.

Live the greyhound adventure!

Be sure to visit the Adopt A Greyhound Guide to get informed about the wonders of adopted greyhounds as well as assist greyhound rescue and adoption programs!

It’s been over twenty years since I met my first greyhounds up close in the back of my vet’s office as they waited for or recovered from spay and neuter procedures. So stoic – and quiet – they sat in the kennels, seemingly oblivious to the chaotic barking and crying from the other dogs and cats.

I love big dogs, married a man who felt the same, and an adopted greyhound became our wedding present to each other. Bubbles was the best, a lovely ambassador of the breed, and a perfect ‘first child’ for us. She and our cat became fast friends and were often caught napping or playing together.

Ten years later, with two kids and another (rescued) cat, we’d moved cross-country, and got involved with the local greyhound adoption and rescue group. I thought we’d stay a one greyhound home, until Kayla got dumped at the pet store during a meet and greet.

With what looked suspiciously like a shallow bullet wound in her side, she was malnourished, flea-ridden, and scared. After sitting as close to me as possible for the duration of the event, my husband and I agreed to foster her.

Adopted greyhound, Bandit, the youngest of our pack

Bubbles was confused and stared at us soulfully even though we told her Kayla was temporary. Bubbles clearly thought Kayla was fine at the store, in public, but this was her home, her domain.

Poor Kayla was thrilled to be in a safe place and she was still a little edgy after her ordeal. When she tried to play, Bubbles laid down the law and announced her supremacy with one sharp bark, then they were good friends for the duration of their lives together.

Bubbles knew us better than we knew ourselves, I guess. Kayla wasn’t temporary. She became a beloved member of our family and started us on a road of fostering within our local greyhound adoption and rescue network. In the years since, we’ve only been a one greyhound family for short periods after losing one of our adopted greyhound pack.

I used to think the adopted greyhound volunteer who said, “three greyhounds is the perfect pack” was crazy. Now, I understand completely. While I prefer to keep our pack at two with a regular flow of foster greyhounds, we’re currently holding at three: Brody, Boo, and Bandit. (and no, I didn’t name them that way on purpose).

Live the greyhound adventure!

Find out if an adopted greyhound is right for you and your family with the Adopt A Greyhound Guide!

Occasionally, our adopted greyhounds realize I have things to do – with both hands – and I’m not available to throw a toy or scratch a head. It’s rare, of course, but it does happen. Being good dogs and valuable members of our family, our adopted greyhounds have offered to help me out today.

Since I’m officially at The Wyld Hollow, stop two on the Tracking Shadows tour with a book excerpt today, the greyhounds took over my blog for your enjoyment. (here’s hoping you find them able assistants)

Hi! Hi! Hi! I’m Bandit! Mom was talking last week about greyhounds and water and I just wanted to add that I never raced so I never saw the trough-thing or the pool like Brody and Boo. But I do not like sprinklers. They pop up and surprise me when Daddy takes me on walks. It’s rather rude really, to surprise a puppy like me when all I want to do is see the world and make new friends … like that squirrel or the boy on the bike! Hi! Hi!

Adopted greyhounds with 'curious' ears

Gah! Brody here, cutting in with the voice of experience. Will that pup never grow up? So the world’s full of surprises. That doesn’t change. Never. One day it was just me and Boo and a couple cats (the birds don’t really count) and then he showed up. Not my kind of surprise. A new toy, a cookie for no real reason, those are surprises I prefer. Not a puppy with a horse complex.

Oh, lighten up, old man. Hello out there? It’s Boo, your ever-friendly queen. These boys just go on and on if you let them. We (as in all three of us) are having a fine summer already. Both the girl and boy are home, which means more hands to raid the cookie jar, or pass out ice cubes. I wouldn’t have thought to enjoy those until Bandit showed up, so three cold cheers for the pup. (even if he is a bit too tall)

And we’re all happy to keep Mom company as she tours the Internet. Really, Internet tours are ideal because she never has to venture far from me. (or the boys of course).

Live the greyhound adventure!

Bandit, Brody, and Boo

If you want to learn more about why greyhounds are so “greyt” Check out the Adopt A Greyhound Guide. (and not just because we’re all in it)

June! And it’s already hot here in the South Carolina Lowcountry. This distresses our youngest greyhound, Bandit because he doesn’t get as much time outside, playing fetch and racing around the yard.

He’s about two and a half now, so it’s a bit easier this summer to manage him and convince him to take a break when he needs it. Boo and Brody, the more experienced of our adopted greyhound pack will romp in the early morning, or near dusk, but otherwise they know summertime is the season to bask in the sunshine.

Greyhounds are not outdoor dogs. They don’t have an undercoat and are therefore more susceptible to temperatures and the whims of mother nature.

Most adopted greyhounds love to play or bask, but they need your supervision to be sure they don’t overdo when temperatures climb.

I’m especially careful with Boo. Being a black adopted greyhound, she can overheat more quickly than our fawn colored boys. You might not realize it, but adopted greyhounds – with such a thin coat and often bald thighs – can get sunburned quite easily.

The best protection is limited exposure, so keep an eye on your adopted greyhound to prevent any injury or unnecessary discomfort.

At the track, after a race, the trainers will send the greyhounds through a water trough, or spray them with a water hose to cool them off. With all the foster greyhounds and greyhounds we’ve adopted, we’ve met several who love water and a few who don’t, but all of them had preferences.

Bubbles, our first greyhound, would bark and jump at the sprinkler, finding it a fun game. And Faith loved to cavort in the rain.

Of course greyhounds can’t swim, but if you have a water-loving greyhound consider a baby pool or sprinkler they can play in on hot days. It will amuse you and your grey.

As always, supervision is important, not only for safety, but to thoroughly enjoy the summer fun with your adopted greyhound.

Live the greyhound adventure!

Find out more about adopting the right greyhound for you with the Adopt A Greyhound Guide.