ABC Wednesday has reached the letter ‘H‘ this week! Well, H is for Hound, of course, so I’m onto a winner there, aren’t I? Because greyhounds are members of the hound group of breeds. This means that they are independent, due to thousands of years of selective breeding to allow them to work on their own, and because of this trait, they can be stubborn.

Some think they’re extremely hard to train, but this is not so. All you have to do is find what motivates them, and you’re halfway there! So far, Sid has learned to go to his bed when told, to lie down, to wait, to stop doing what he’s doing when I say ‘uh-uh!’, to ’speak’, to touch a box with his nose, and to make eye contact (the ‘look at me’ command). He will also come to me, but isn’t terribly reliable at this one just yet. However, he does love his training sessions, and has been known to request one by stretching his head up to the kitchen dresser and looking from the clicker to me and back again.

So, until one has a greyhound properly trained to come when called in pretty much all situations, one has to be sensible as to when and where to allow them off lead. Now, for some people and some greyhounds, this will be ‘never’ (unless in an enclosed area) and I respect the views of those who differ with me, but we’ve been pretty lucky, and out of the four dogs we’ve had previously, three have had the luxury of daily off lead walks in the country and never got themselves into any trouble, because they did have good recalls. However, in a situation where there are numerous other dogs running about, some of them not very well behaved at all, we found it wise to keep them on leads*. In their later years, this meant harnesses for both Renie and Jack.

They loved being out and about, but in the summer we had to be a little bit careful, because greyhounds are prone to overheating. Here is Renie demonstrating how hot she would get in the sun.

She didn’t want to go indoors by herself, you see, even though she’d have liked to. Her Royal Highness was always much happier hogging the sofa. With her tongue hanging out!

Sid gets hot too. Here he is on a trip to a country park last summer, having an ice cream.

I had to hold it for him, of course. Greyhounds are pretty smart dogs, but there is the whole opposable thumb thing .. or lack of one.

Of course, when the weather is cold, Sid loves warmth, and will seek it out. So why is he in the conservatory, lying on this uncomfortably flat bed?

The answer is simple. The conservatory has a heated floor! Look at that expression of bliss! Greyhounds are the most hedonistic of dogs!

They love being hugged, too. This was Sid’s first day with us, when quite a lot of dogs might be expected to hang back a little and be shy. Not Sid.

And here he is at a show last summer, being hugged by a sweet little chap in a hat!

That’s one of my favourite pictures of Sid.

Of course, the weather isn’t always kind, and then greyhounds feel the cold, too. Here’s Renie, too lazy to move to a warmer room. Looks like she’s hiding herself, doesn’t it?

Whereas actually, she’s warming her nose.

Oh yes, we do have to take good care of our hounds. And one thing we have to do is take care of their teeth by giving them plenty of hard things to chew.

See how hard he’s working on that! I think it’s a pig ear, but he has the smoked bone for later.

Now, how about I leave you with a short video of Sid? As you know, he’s a tripod, and that means he has to hop his back end along when he walks. I’m sure some of you think that sounds a bit awkward for him, so I thought you might like to see him in action.

Hops along just fine, doesn’t he? And he looks happy, too!

Oh, and by the way – the picture right at the top was taken on our holiday to Dewey Beach last year.

*Extending leads are NOT recommended for use with greyhounds for various reasons, the most important being that they can go from 0-30mph in a few strides if they see something they want to chase. If you drop the lead it can seriously spook them so that they panic and run faster, and blindly, and can get injured. If you don’t drop the lead, you could theoretically break their necks. However, we knew our dogs. Neither had a tendency to take off after anything while being walked: Jack was too elderly, and Renie too lazy, and both had been thoroughly trained to walk nicely. However, I would still say to anyone who asked, don’t do it.

Well, well, here we are at ABC Wednesday’s letter ‘G‘, and here I am, doing greyhounds as my theme! Seems all I have to do is post lots of pictures for you! But if you’ve been here before, you’ll know I never take the easy route, so this post will be greyhounds, alright, but also something else to do with the letter ‘G‘ for each picture.

For instance, did you know that I had decided that when I was ready to adopt another greyhound after losing the Princess and the Pirate so tragically, I wanted a small one? A dainty girl, perhaps? And what did I get? A great gallumphing giant of a dog – the biggest we’d ever owned!

Here he is in the garden with Son No. 1’s girlfriend. the lovely T.

Sid, as you know, is a gentle giant, but even with a leg missing he weighs in at just over seventy pounds. A hefty 32kg, or to put it another way, 32,000 grams. Not exactly a featherweight!

The picture at the top was taken at 2008’s Great Greyhound Gathering, held at Nottingham’s racecourse. As you see, there were greyhounds everywhere, along with their guys and gals, and it was just the same in 2009. Same groups of perfect strangers standing around talking about their gorgeous dogs.

Happy dogs, just hanging out. Maybe going to buy gourmet treats or other goodies.

Or just gregariously reclining in the shade of all the green canvas. Greyhounds can be terribly fashion conscious, but green goes with everything, don’t you find?

Talking of happy (which I’m sure we were) my Princess Renie was a happy girl. And to prove it, she was a champion grinner. At her happiest reclining gracefully on the sofa, she would often roll over, stretch her neck out comfortably and … grin!

And grin.

And you couldn’t help but grin back and give her a scritch. She was a very well-bred girl. Her grandsire was a dog called Greenpark Fox.

Sid has given me a very tentative grin once or twice, but he’s not the smiler that the Princess was, bless him. Still he is a good dog, and he does do extremely well at Meet & Greets. Here he is promoting the Lincolnshire Greyhound Trust at a recent event. You can see a few of the goods we have on sale on the top of that table!

And here he is at another Meet & Greet at a garden centre.

My golden boy is very good at eliciting sympathy and helping to garner the donations!

I could go on, but I’m sure you will all be grateful if I stop here. After all, there are a great number of contributions to ABC Wednesday every week, with so many wonderful posts from our gifted participants that I’m sure you’re eager to go and check them all out!

Don’t let me stop you – I’m going to be doing the same myself, very soon!

See my furry companion up there?  Fast asleep in his comfortable bed as a thunderstorm rages on the other side of the wall just inches from his head.  How fabulous to have a fearless dog!   Unlike the Princess, Sid is completely unmoved by the rumbles and the flashes of lightning.   Poor Princess Renie couldn’t eat during a storm, but as you see, Sid sees no reason to go on a fast.

There he is, finishing a dog biscuit, and not under a desk or behind the couch, but right up against the front door!

He’s a fawn, by the way, a nice light golden colour with a white chest and white tips to his paws and tail.   Pirate Jack was a fawn too, officially a red fawn, though he too had the white detailing.

He wasn’t fearful of thunder, either.  What Pirate would be?  He was over twelve years old in this picture, so he’d almost lost his tuck* and his face had gone white, but on the whole he was still a fit and healthy dog.

One interesting thing about greyhounds is that despite their finely built frames, they eat more food than most other breeds of their weight.   This is because they have a very fast metabolism.   Even though they spend half their lives flat out and snoring …

And they sleep in some very funny positions, let me tell you -

They still seem to need quite a lot of fuel.  Here’s Sid with one of his many little filler snacks. This time the remnants of our dinner in a foil tray.

Of course, Sid does work for his living.  He attends Meet and Greets to allow the general public to fuss and fawn over him and feed him biscuits and so on, under the pretext of being an ambassador for the breed. The dogs who do this insist on a soft bed to fulfill their comfort requirements, and provision must be made for cold weather.  Finicky?  How could you suggest such a thing?

On one of his first forays into the Meet and Greet world, Sid shared a blanket with a fellow fawn.

That pink and blue rug is rather flattering to their colouring, don’t you think?  It was freezing that day, so they really did need it.

The Meet and Greets are primarily to let people know what fantastic pets these dogs make, of course, and it’s a chance for newly retired dogs to get to know a little bit about their new world.

Yes, it’s easy to forget what these dogs did for a living when you see them flopped around the house on their fluffy beds, isn’t it?  Hard to imagine them being fleet of foot?  Just to remind us, let’s take a look at a video of one of Sid’s races.

It’s the official track video, so you’ll have to click the link and go and watch it on Greyhound Data.  Don’t fret, this isn’t the race in which he fractured his leg.  This one was fun for him – go take a look. He’s racing out of trap two, and wearing the blue jacket. And boy, he was fast!

*Tuck – this is the ‘waist’ of a dog.  In a greyhound, it is supposed to be well defined, so that the underpart of the dog goes up in a sharp curve from the end of the ribcage toward the pelvis.  In older dogs, when the stomach muscles are losing their tone, the tuck becomes rather less of a tuck, and more of a ’sag’, just the same as with us.

For other ABC Wednesday posts, click this link and visit Mrs Nesbitt’s ABC blog!

What better ‘E‘ word to begin with for ABC Wednesday with the greyhounds than ‘elegant‘?  And here is the beautiful Sid, showing us that he is an extremely elegant dog indeed!  Propped up on his elbows, with those long legs extending in front and his head erect, he is the very epitome of the word, is he not?

For those who are new to this blog and don’t know, Mr Sid is a tripod – he is missing that other back leg – and that is why he has visible ribs and spine.  He might look emaciated there, but really and truly he is not.  He is a very well muscled and fit dog, and we can’t allow him to be anything else or it would put a strain on his remaining hind leg, which would not do.

Our very first greyhound, James, was elegant too.  He was such a sweetheart of a dog!

He was beautiful, and so eager to please that he turned out to be a quite extraordinary dog.  He knew all the usual commands and then some – unlike most greyhounds he would play fetch!   And he had an extensive vocabulary.  I counted up the words he would respond to one day, and it was over three hundred. Now, it’s true some of them were duplicates – for instance, he knew half a dozen ways we might say his dinner was ready, but it’s still amazing.  Since he was our first dog I had no idea he was so unusual, and I just kept on training him until we both got bored.  In the end he could do tricks like ’singing’ and even growling to order (tail lashing away madly in the rear) and he would stare fixedly at a treat on the floor until he was told he could have it.  He would shake paws and do a high five and … oh, all kinds of things.  And all this in a dog who was abandoned one winter with hideous old wounds and covered in mange.  Quite extraordinary.

Here he is as a senior, elegantly enjoying the sunshine.

The Princess Renie was a very elegant dog, too.  Almost everything she did was done elegantly. She was dainty, and fastidious – she would always walk around a puddle or patch of mud, for example.  And just like the princess in the fairy story, she would always elect to lie on the softest bed going.

Apparently, sheepskin is also acceptable for a Princess.

One thing she and James had in common was an inability to put their ears up properly.  They both had small, soft, tightly-folded greyhound ears.  Not so our little Pirate Jack!

Little Jack had enormous ears!  Incidentally, there is no tattoo in that ear because Jack was English bred.  Most racing greyhounds in the UK are Irish, and they have a tattoo in each ear, which tells us what year they were whelped and what their parentage is etc.  English greyhounds are tattooed in one ear only.

That’s not the only difference between the Princess and the Pirate.  The Princess was elegant, as I’ve said.  The Pirate?

… Not so much!

Well.  He was a Pirate!  What do you expect?

Now, lest your experience so far of my dogs leads you to suspect that they lived their entire lives horizontal and semi-comatose, I must tell you that they did, on occasion, become excited.  Here’s Jack, bouncing in happy expectation of a treat.

See those ears?  Oh yes, he could get them both perfectly erect when he felt like it.

Being a buccaneer by nature, he loved to go off exploring.

And sometimes he’d bring back exciting booty.  Yes, that rabbit expired quite some time ago, but Captain Jack didn’t care!  He caught it, and even though it was only half a rabbit, and wasn’t actually moving at the time, he was exhilarated!  Princess Renie, on the other hand, followed behind in a spirit of mild enquiry.  She wanted nothing to do with stinky decomposing rabbit anyway.

But in case you fear that the Princess never stirred herself to any kind of strenuous excercise, I will leave you with this video of her playing.

That’s Jack’s yellow duck she was playing with, but he didn’t mind.  She killed it several times over, and then, exhausted, she slept.