When they no longer make their owners money they are either:
destroyed, abandoned or in a few lucky cases, rescued.
These dogs are THREE.
The article didn't spare the worst (some of the stories reduced me to tears) and de-bunked the almost universally held beliefs that Greyhounds need huge amounts of exercise, that they cannot be house-trained and that they can't adjust to family life, that they rush about, that they need loads of space.....
We had been considering a companion for our Ridgeback X but had stumbled over it, as she was (and is) a dominant (although gentle and trained so absolutely no aggression), princess. Long story short, we ended up at our local Greyhound rescue. I'm afraid I cried my eyes out. Not because the dogs weren't beautifully cared for, because they were, but because these lucky few were just so sweet when they had had so little human kindness. I have never been in such a quiet kennels. They seemed 'resigned'. The lovely kennel Managers brought several dogs to meet us. My overall impression of their physicality was that they were odd looking and huge. My overall impression of their temperament was 'why don't people know about these dogs??'.
It took us minutes to know that one of them was coming home - but which one? They were all lovely, they all desperately needed a home. We asked 'who can't you re-home?' and were given the barmy but sadly true, explanation, that people don't want big black dogs. Apparently, the brindle and blue bitches are fairly easy to re-home and after that, it is a sliding scale down to those big, black, boys.
So - a big. black boy was led to us. It was impossible to gauge his character. His story was appallingly sad, he had been rescued in Ireland, hung around in kennels and then been shipped to England in the hope that he might fare better there. He was pretty newly arrived at the kennels. He was spectacularly smelly and his feet were torn to shreds. Hebe ignored him. He ignored her - actually he ignored everyone and everything. We figured ignoring was fine. We'd take him home and see what a bath, continued treatment for his feet, Hebe's joyfulness, a warm bed, good food and a lot of love could do. That was three extraordinarily happy years ago. Turned out, he is loving, funny, playful, gentle, loyal and sweet and utterly devoted to us and to Hebe. If he could say 'thank you' every day, he would. In fact for a while he was so desperate to ingratiate himself that he would hold on for a pee for EVER (we never had an accident in the house) and would be terrifyingly good. My father who was visiting at the time, filled up the first time that trusting lad looked him in the eye, Steve and I did the same the first time he 'stole' a biscuit. It's not often a dog gets applause and cuddles for stealing! I've met hundreds of Greyhounds since and forgive the evangelising tone but seriously people - want a dog? think 'Greyhound!'
He prefers our bed to his......
He loves getting together with his Greyhound buddies....
and Dad can't keep up!
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