Well this a sad but happy story. I was brought up with dogs always as pets, my mother raised and showed newfoundlands. At times when they were away I had to welp and deliver puppies from 12 twelve years old. Feeding, grooming and a few times even show the dogs at dog shows.
I always knew that I would have a dog as a pet, once your a dog lover your always a dog lover.
I got married and finially got our own home, my mother offered us a newf puppy but my wife never liked all the hair. So we did the next best thing and took our friends wippet . They had to move to a condo upstate and couldn't take her with them. She was a great dog, she loved her tennis balls. She carried them all over and drop them into your lap wanting you to throw them. She was a fast little dog, would jump about 2-3 feet into the air to catch her ball.
Well we had her for a year and thought she needed a friend to play with. We had a friend who had a greyhound and told us of a track closing and they needed foster homes. We applied and within a week we had our greyhound, normally your dog that you get goes to a home thats had dogs to help with the transition. Because of your dog history and the fact we had a dog already we had the chance to welcome our dog sooner.
Have you every seen a greyhound go up stairs or walk across wood floors, these are some things they have never seen before. We had to teach him to go up stairs, my wife pulling and myself pushing from behind. It took two times and he was leaping 4 stairs at a time up after that. We named him duke and the whippet was Ariel. They got along great, they would run around my back yard at full speed and ran around the above groun pool at the other end of the yard. Within a week they had a track in the yard, around the pool was banked from them going so fast.
One day I was out back a couple months after we resuced him and was throwing the ball for ariel. She would run after it and Duke would chase her.
After a while I called them and turned to open our glass slider door, I wasn't as fast as duke that night and he ran full speed into the glass door breaking his neck. Ariel came up and she was confussed, I grabbed duke but there was nothing I could do. My wife came up from the basement because she hard the crash and she knew something was wrong right away. It was a hard night that night , he passed away quick and hopefully with no pain.
We missed duke and we had a huge empty feeling. When we conntacted the greyhound rescue group to let them know what happened, we decided that it would be best to adapt another greyhound. We got our new boy greyhound and he was much bigger than duke was and we named him Ginn. First thing I did was put a gate on the slider so they would know something was there. Now ginn had a great thing about him, when he looked at you he almost seemed like he was smiling.
Ariel and him got along great, Ginn didn't like to chase her though. He was more of a couch potato, a three and half foot 100 pound couch potato. He one big lap dog.
We had children and they started to crawl around and starting to walk. Well you little kids and they lose thier balance easy, Matt fell on ariel. She turned around and snapped at him. At first we thought he must of really hurt or something for her to do that. But that was the last time, the next time she almost got him in the face. Ariel was getiing old and we found out the hard way she wasn't liking kids.
It took a lot of thinking but we decided to find a home for the two of them with no kids. We contacted the greyhound group and they actully found a great home for both of them. It turned out to be one of the foster homes that helps new greyhounds make the transitions. It was hard but it was something we had to do.
Now my boys are 5 and 6 and we thought it would be a good time to look at a pet. We went out looking and my wife said we're just looking. We went to a animal shelter in Lyons NY and they had some nice dogs. My wife was looking at small dogs but I was always a Big dog man. I saw this one dog sitting in the kennel and was just staring at me. Next thing I know is some other family came over with one of the girls and took him to open pen where you can meet the dog. I watched hoping they wouldn't like him. Afew minutes they put him back and I turned to my wife and said thats the one. Well she told me I was nuts but we went in the pen to meet him. He is a black lab mix with we think greyhound or something tall. His head comes up to my waist and he wieghs 95 pounds.
He fit great in the truck when we left the shelter, so much for just looking.
We still have my best friend, his names George and if your lucky you just might meet out at a cache.
I kind of laugh when my wife complains about the black hair around the house!
