Being a retired greyhound in our house means bonus time during the holiday season. There are more visits from friends and family as well as the UPS man and mail carrier. There’s the extra baking and cooking which means extra opportunities to swoop in on anything that might drop on the floor. Or in Bandit’s case, the opportunity to lick anything that might be placed too close to the counter’s edge.

When Bandit first arrived he was just under a year old and he showed up a couple weeks before Thanksgiving. It was his first holiday season with people and he was curious about anything and everything we were doing.

He was sure he could help with the turkey. He was thrilled to get a bite of raw potato before they went in the pot. He did his best to convince us he would be the best one to taste-test the gravy.

Dinner that first year was a test for all of us. I sincerely believe Bandit wanted to behave and use good manners, but there were so many people, and so many wonderful smells.  Our other two retired greyhounds were setting an ideal example of resting on the floor until cleanup time, but Bandit paced around and managed to steal the napkin right out of my lap.

While people food is NOT recommended for retired greyhounds, a bite of apple or potato is a traditional treat for our adopted greyhounds. And fair warning, turkey isn’t the best type of treat. Too much turkey can result in painful leg cramps, among other problems for greys.

How do I know?

It’s a lesson we learned the hard way when everyone at our Thanksgiving table bought the pitiful look Kayla was sporting as the feast wound down. She’d managed to sneak a bite of turkey from each one of us and ended up pretty sore and limping around. It really impeded her evening romp. The cramps passed after a few hours, but it wasn’t much fun for her. And we felt terribly guilty.

Wishing you the best this holiday season and as always…

Live the greyhound adventure!

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!

So in preparing to take our daughter to college, we had to arrange care for our domestic petting zoo. This was a moment when being a part of the community of people who’ve adopted retired greyhounds was absolutely greyt!

I’ll admit, dropping the dogs with our friend Jim and his adopted greyhounds Ozzie and Ransom gave me a weird bonus: no ginormous greyhound puppy in the bed the night before we left. There weren’t even greyhounds on the floor to trip over in the morning.

Adopted greyhounds Ransom and Ozzie

No dogs in the hotel bed wasn’t half bad either. I’d like to say Bandit learned to sleep on the floor while we were gone, but it would be more accurate to say he’s learned to be sneakier about sleeping on the bed since we’ve returned.

It was weird returning home with only the cats to greet us at the door. After a few greetings and snuggles were exchanged, we looked at each other and decided to pick up our three adopted greyhounds right away, even though we’d been on the road since 5am.

Our three adopted greyhounds were their typically ornery selves for Jim, but knowing greyhounds, and being a greyt guy, Jim told me he enjoyed it. Now that’s they type of friend you meet in the adopted greyhound community. Going from two to five greyhounds with unique issues and personalities is a lot to ask, but Jim told us he got into a rhythm with the ‘pack’ and it all worked out fine.

Of course it worked out fine. It’s greyhounds – and these five are very familiar with each other.

Picking up our dogs was an event as lively and silly as the drop off, as the pack of five adopted greyhounds greeted us at the door, ready for kisses and lovies and all eager to be up front.

Ozzie and Ransom were fantastic hosts, even if Brody broke into their food bin (Brody hates his prescription food, most especially when there’s a more interesting dog food in the vicinity).

It’s friends like Jim and his adopted greyhounds Ozzie and Ransom that are one of the singular perks of adopting retired greyhounds and working with such a caring group of volunteers who share our love for these amazing dogs.

Live the greyhound adventure!

Well, for those of you who’ve tuned in for an update on our adopted greyhound Boo’s tail, it seems all is well and she’ll get to keep every last inch of it. We are all (probably most especially Boo) quite happy the tail survived in tact.

The hair’s grown back so it no longer looks quite so (ahem) ugly and she’s pretty good about leaving it alone.

Brody has maintained the status quo for effectively blending grumpy with adorable as he lumbers along through each day. Though he’s started to keep a wary eye the packing process as our daughter prepares for her college move-in date.

Bandit, the youngest of our adopted greyhounds, has become quite the medical professional, keeping track of Boo as well as his human family lately. When my daughter broke her toe recently, Bandit detoured from the normal bedtime routine to race downstairs and check on her.

And in the days following that when I was laid up for several days, he seemed to understand. He hovered and checked on me, and was very careful not to lay on me, just next to me while I rested. He even forgave me for not going outside to play fetch on the days when I couldn’t quite stand upright. As a friend said recently, “That dog is just a couple hours short of achieving an LPN”.

He has help lately, as the pill pockets we use for Boo’s medicine are inexplicably more enticing than catnip to our feline contingent. If Bandit’s the nurse, Maverick has become the pharmacist and Sterling the assistant. Or maybe they’re both better classified as ‘addicts’.

Maverick barely restrains himself while I dispense Boo’s medicine. Then he’s hovering over the open bag of beef flavored pill pockets, while Sterling stalks in from the opposite side. No matter where I try to prep Boo’s ‘treat’ the cats are there, eager for a little nip of the beef.

Yeah, it’s a bit of a crazy zoo we live in with our three adopted greyhounds, two cats, and four finches, but I love them all. Most days.

Live the greyhound adventure!

For more information on finding and adopting the right greyhound for you, visit the Adopt A Greyhound Guide! Proceeds benefit retired greyhound rescue and adoption groups.

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!

Let me tell you about a morning. A morning that looks just like any other morning. The sun rises, the alarm goes off, I stumble through motions that are routine after decades of practice.

Feeding our adopted greyhounds should be counted in that routine – for me as well as our pack of greys.

On this particular morning however, my precious pack of sight hounds did their best to give me the opportunity to prove I was awake and coherent. When I wandered into the office rather than the family room, they figured some important people-task had come up. They hovered, then nudged me back toward the kitchen and the dog food bin.

Except they knew I needed the bowls to hold the food (although they may have been hoping I’d just let them stuff their heads into the bin). So Boo aimed me back toward the family room to collect Bandit’s bowl.

See, that’s routine. I pick up Bandit’s bowl, then hers, then Brody’s in an economy of motion – going from the furthest away and moving toward the ever important dog food bin.

And when it was clear I needed help (after staring at Boo’s bowl wondering what I was missing) she nudged me in the right direction. The smallest of our pack, she is the queen and what she wants, she gets.

She gave some invisible greyhound signal to Bandit and together they herded me in the proper direction, not allowing me to deviate. Hungry tummies were depending on the sleepy human, y’know.

With Bandit’s bowl in hand, Boo and Bandit escorted me back through the kitchen to the food bin and supervised with no small measure of concern until I emerged victorious with their breakfast.

Oh, how I love a smart dog – adopted greyhounds in particular!

Live the greyhound adventure!

Learn what makes adopted greyhounds so priceless! Buy the Adopt A Greyhound Guide today!