Build Your Brand

Big Dogs And Summer NIghts

Last night belonged to the Big Dogs.  My husband and I were out in the front yard enjoying the slight drop in temperatures, kind-of-sort-of pulling weeds from one of the flower beds and between the spaces of our front walk when one of our neighbors and her new to her dog came into view.

She had a Big Dog at the end of her leash.  My husband, who had met her previously and filled me in, had explained that she'd adopted this big guy out at Lollypop - that someone in the previous family had developed Lyme disease and was no longer able to care for the dog.

He was rumored to be "about 6 years old" and, as near as anyone could tell, he was a mix of lab and Great Pyrenees.  You could certainly see evidence of both. 

He boasted an all white coat that came out in handfulls as my husband raked his fingers through it.  Typical for all of those double-coated dogs.   What my neighbor had discovered in the two months that she had him was that,  given his choice, he'd chase cars and trucks and he didn't seem to know how to walk on a leash. He came with the name "Cain" and my neighbor, deciding he'd been through enough unsettling changes before she adopted him, decided not to change it.

And, he  was an absolute love-bug; a 140 pound, hail-fellow-well-met, easy-going kind of dog. 

Children loved him.  Their faces would light up when he came sauntering down the sidewalk.  He maintained his part of the bargain of "meet and greet"  by standing perfectly still while they came up to him, stroked his neck or buried their faces in his furry neck. 

We spent a long time enjoying his company and talking about dogs with our neighbor.  I hadn't seen her in quite  a while so playing catch-up was fun.  She was used to big dogs and, having had to euthanize  her boisterous, chocolate lab not too long ago, had made up her mind that her next dog would be a 20-pounder and female. 

And, as it always happens, sometimes the best laid plans of mice and men are cast aside when something else comes along.  For her, the "something else" was Cain.

According to Roger Caras,  only very special people should be allowed to have Great Pyrenees. He writes:

Great Pyrenees are giant dogs with more good qualities than we can catalog.  They are loyal unto death to their family; they will tackle anything that threatens them.  They are very affectionate and responsive to human moods.  They take to children naturally and are generally safe and reliable.  They are incomparable baby-sitters.  Gentle and considerate with strangers (although cautious at first), they are not usually quarrelsome. ... They are especially appealing as puppies, and once grown, they move with enormous purpose and self-assurance.

This is a breed with so many special qualities one is tempted to urge restriction of ownership and breeding to to people understanding and deserving enough to be granted those privileges. (pg. 139 of The Roger Caras Dog Book.)

We somewhat reluctantly ended our conversation and my neighbor and Cain headed down the sidewalk.  A short time later, my husband's eyes lit up as he spied what looked to be an English Mastiff and its owners headed in our direction.

What better bliss than this?

 

 

Why I Started This Blog

Almost a year ago,  I  wrote my first blog post to reach out to women who were re-inventing themselves.   If you want to read the more detailed explanation of why  I decided to start this blog,  you can click on this line of text.  And, to check out my special interest blog,  on the abilites that dogs have to change  your life, I invite you to visit:  HealingRescueDogs to see what I'm doing.

And, to read my recently published articles,  you can click here.

Guest Post by Carol Bryant

Anatomy of a Grieving Dog Mom

By: Carol Bryant, Social Media/PR Director and Dog Writer, FIDO Friendly magazine

There’s a hole in my heart where whole used to be. Those were the first words that came to mind when I sat down today to write this piece about grief, the power it spews into one’s life whether we want it or not. The great Emily Dickinson wrote so many passages about death, yet one resonates over and over, “Forever is composed of nows.” It certainly is. Are you loving someone today? Missing someone today? Wanting something today? Right now, you hold the forever that is the feeling.  Right now.

And today,  now,  my forever is grief.

It’s an odd thing grief. We fear it, dismiss it, try and avoid it, occasionally have brushes with it, and most often times without warning, it invites itself into our lives. No welcome mat but it comes nonetheless. Good ole Emily said it best, “Because I could not stop for death, He kindly stopped for me.” So when Lucy Maloney  asked if she could have the honor of immortalizing my Brandy Noel in replica form with one of her miniatures, I hesitated.

Did I want to resurface those feelings? Would people think I was ‘weird’ for wanting to have this forever keepsake? Would this set me back to day one when I let my baby girl’s frail, disease-ravaged body free to soar and me left alone without her physical presence? None of that mattered, I deduced. This is a gift for me. Some of us visit cemeteries.  Some light a candle in memory of; others we suffer in silence because, after all, ‘it’s just an animal.’  Nod your head if somewhere along life’s highway you’ve had that comment thwarted your way.

"There's no wrong way to grieve," my grief counselor told me. “You saw a grief counselor because your dog died?” Uh, okayyyyy. Yep, some people validate themselves and their ability to master the art of grieving by tossing eye rolls and handing out sneers like napkins at a cocktail party. <thumps hand to forehead> Oh wait, that’s right anger is a part of the process.  Some wounds run deep.

So I sent a locket of hair to Lucy Maloney with some photographs of a life well lived and forever painfully missed. 

 

It costs two postage stamps to send grief these days.  Not bad.

I figured I would I see something resembling my Brandy in microscope thimble-sized form come back to me where I’d keep it in a closet until the day came I could face her likeness without melting into a puddle of hurt.

What did arrive changed me.  Me, who knows all about grief,  has mastered the art of suffering through it and while not kicking it’s choke hold on me, overcame and carries it with her like a shield of sorts. A wounded warrior. The mailman delivered hope. Hope costs a few more than 2 stamps by the way.

I called a family member to come open the box for me.  Same as the day I had to let my baby go at the vet. Please don’t make me do this alone.

What  surfaced was nothing short of a complete likeness of my Brandy Noel.  Her fur intertwined with the process Lucy uses to make miracles come to life.  She stands more than several inches high,  she certainly isn’t thimble sized,  but the gaze in her eyes, the ever so slight tilt of her head, the love in who she always shall be, those are the magical qualities in Lucy Maloney’s work that were brought to life.  Many a tear fell that day and continue to do so.  It’s my grief, after all.

“Are you going to sleep with it?” “Put it next to her ashes?” These are some things people asked me.  Contrary to popular belief, no I’m not sitting home with an Ouija board summoning her spirit nor immortalizing her with a dedicatory wing of the house. But even if I were, am I not a fully functioning adult? Don’t I pay taxes and live and laugh, earn an income and rescue stray dogs? Don’t I have the right as a human being to hurt and deal as I see fit? What is wrong with this world to diminish the handling of one’s grief?

My Brandy is home in the closest sense I will ever have her until again we meet. Lucy Maloney is a maker of miracles and far above the craft her hands create. She is sort of a Clarence to George Bailey. Well, at least to me. For that, I am forever indebted.

As for my hurt, if you’ve loved and lost someone, you are walking that path with me. I view my grief as a suitcase. Some days it’s a cosmetics bag full and others it’s Samsonite gorilla sized. Sometimes I feel like I’m on a carousel in the airport waiting for the form my grief will take. Do I wait days or weeks before I tear up and ache so very much or is today a carry on kind of day where I just take it with me? In any event, I know my luggage always arrives and never gets lost. I’ve learned losing a loved one means gaining a new identity. Victim of grief, survivor of hurt, and eventually carrier of pain.

I was one of those people, by the way, who said “never again. I cannot get this close to an animal like this.” He sits at my feet daily and his name is Dexter, by the way. My never again. Thankfully I think with my heart and then ask my brain to double check my work. I could never not love this way again.

“It came to me that every time I lose a dog they take a piece of my heart with them.  And every new dog that comes into my life gifts me with a piece of their heart.  If I live long enough, all the components of my heart will be a dog, and I will become as generous and loving as they.” Anonymous wrote that.  I bet they’ve grieved a suitcase full, too.

 

Carol Bryant | Writer and Social Media/PR Director
FIDO Friendly Magazine

Nominee, 2010 Dog Writers Association of America award
As heard on Oprah Radio: Gayle King Show radio interview
Time to walk the blog!™: FIDO Friendly blog
Find us Facebook: FIDO Friendly Facebook
Follow us on Twitter: FIDO Friendly Twitter

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

   

 

Framed Realities

Looking outside my window,  I watch two neighborhood women walk their dogs.   It's early morning; after the school buses have all trundled through but before the 9AM walkers pass by.  Both dogs are noses-to-the-ground.  The larger one, Barney, is coal black with slightly comical whiskers. 

"We wanted the least assertive," explained J.  And so he is.  He's a bit stand-offish, but he'll wag his tail and want to come and check you out.  But he won't.   He's leggy.  His coat is a thick blue-black curly shine and his longish tail swishes the air.  He's a cross-breed: a ladbra-doodle  I think. 

His "companion,"  Maggie,  is quite the charming,  terrier-diva.  She's a West Highland Terrier.

Her short legs put her at a slight disadvantage on this walk.  For the two steps that Barney takes, she hustles to cover that same ground  in six, or eight or ten.  However, her saucy,  in-your-face,  sunny temperament takes the world head on, more than compensating for her  small stature.

She's  a great representative of all that's fabulous about this breed.  No doubt,  Barney borrows some of Maggie's  attitude.  At the very least,  his own self-worth gets a boost from her cheery outlook.

Together, they are my comic relief for the three-five minutes that I stand in my bedroom,  looking out two sets of windows that frame my front yard and sidewalk.   Their owners,  two women  I've known for many years,   have been regulars - making this walk together for quite some time.

Was it just five days ago  that I found myself sitting in one of the pews of the First Methodist Church?  Watching  L today, as she laughingly reaches to untangle Maggie's leash from Barney's,  I marvel at the quiet power of daily routine to slowly help ease unimagineable grief.

Wonder what they're talking about today?

 

Glancing to my right,  I look out my study window where, in the next yard over,  four or five adolescents take turns bouncing on a trampoline.  They range in age from 13 - 15.    In the next ten minutes, their numbers swell to eight or ten. 

The girls are more self-assured.  You can see it in how they artfully arrange themselves on the porch rail as they watch several of the boys  crowd the trampoline.  The boys out-do themselves jumping hard on the stretched canvass, turning and twisting in the air before landing on their feet, or on their backs, saved by the give of the trampoline. 

This ancient dance of flirtation almost always starts with  the boys more than a few steps behind.   Experience will be  a swift teacher.  Next spring,  they will be more in sync, occasionally taking the lead;  sometimes creating a new step.

 

Standing in the doorway, between the kitchen and dining room,  I look across the dining room and out the bay window.  I can see the side yard and the house on the other side of the street.  Rake in hand, my neighbor industriously pulls leaves into piles that edge the curb. 

He knew my grandparents and can still tell me stories about them.  

He's fond of the occasional martini or glass of sherry that he sips while sitting on one of the rattan pieces of porch furniture that grace his front porch during the spring and summer months. 

His wife rakes alongside him.  She knew my grandparents too.

His white truck sits alongside her sedan in their driveway.  So completely different. Yet, the same.

 

One of the two windows in my study looks out over the back part of my yard and down the street.  The side street.  The one named after one of New York's governors, so my grandmother told me.

Way down at the far end of the street,  I see my friend N toss a set of golf clubs into the trunk of her car.   She's a retired educator,  reasonably active Democrat and an avid reader.  Her house, like mine, is on a corner.  Her side yard is a beautiful sunken garden that is always miticulously maintained. 

When the weather's agreeable and we're both free,  I'll wander down and we'll sit on her back deck with a bottle of white wine paired with an elegant cheese alongside crackers.  

These are some of the small moments  of daily life in my neigborhood.   I don't deliberately plan my own day around what's going on around me.  I catch these moments as I'm moving from one room to the next or standing in the kitchen figuring out what I can pull from the refridgerator.

It takes less than five seconds for me to glance up,  look out,  and register a moment.  Most times, in the blink of an eye, the scene shifts and become something different.  Sometimes, what I see becomes a punctuation mark that interrupts my thoughts, forcing me to stop and savor the moment for what it is:  a framed snapshot of reality.

 

 

 

Men And Dogs

Tessa, The Wonder Dog has been with us since May.   Although she's been missing from my blog posts for a while,  she's been staking her claim as an energetic part of the family, wrapping her paws securely around the hearts of my son and husband.

Son first, because he came around to her first.  Husband second, because he, somewhat grudgingly, followed suit.

If you come from a family of "big dogs" you'll know what I'm writing about.  What is it about men and dogs?  Some guys love the larger breeds and refuse to recognize a dog weighing less than 40 pounds as a dog.  

And, a dog that weighs 20 pounds?  Denial. 

It helps that Tessa's heart is bigger than her physical size.  She's fierce when it comes to guarding the house from any perceived threat on her part.  When she's out in the yard, she patrols with the intense concentration of a German Shepherd before surrendering to the joyful pleasures of air-sniffing for dog-delicious smells that send her boing-ing off across the yard.

We've got her back in Level One obedience with  K-9 healers  for socialization more than anything else.  This time, she's partnered with my husband,  A.  When my schedule permits, I tag along to watch. 

And, this time,  she's not the stand-out dog in class that needs the most "work".  She's focused on what she's doing and, more often than not,  A takes off her anxiety wrap soon after the class begins.

Partnering with A once a week translates into more positive interactions between the two of them at home.   Tessa's a lot more responsive  to A ; not shying away from him, not barking furiously at him when she feels insecure. 

She's staked out places where she likes to curl up in various rooms in the house so that she doesn't have to be constantly at my side.  She's small enough to burrow into one of the sofa cushions in the sun room.  Upstairs, she'll dive into the pile of pillows on the bed or she'll sleep, nose-to-tail on the dog bed in my study. 

She doesn't look like a stray.  Her coat's shiny, her eyes are bright.

She's extremely inquisitive and upbeat - traits that are part of her temperament.

She's skittish.  Learned behavior from whatever happened to her when she was a stray.  If someone leans over her,  reaching their long arm down to pat her,  she startles:  pulls back immediately and, I suspect, if she wasn't leasehed,  she'd bolt.

Probably not going to be a therapy dog. 

Candidate for agility?  Oh, yeah. 

Heart stealer?  Most definitely.   Her willingness to trust always lurked somewhere in the background even when she was backing away (from my husband) or standing her ground, barking furiously (at my husband) or scrambling, at the end of her leash, to get to something (another dog).

What constantly amazes me and gives me profound joy is that indescribable "something" that dogs have that wants to bond with people.  Watching the intangible rewards when that happens between one pint-size dog and the two men in my life who I love more than life itself is priceless.

 

 

 

Lost

Thursday night.  My son and I stow carefully packed, sturdy, canvass bags into the seat wells of my station wagon.  My mother-in-law's station wagon, if truth be told.  When Alice died,  it came to us, our last remnant of Alice's restaurant -- she'd have liked that turn of phrase.

Rain had been falling since early morning, the perpetually dark skies suspending us in a heavy twilight.  No release all day.  And, none tonight. 

Some parts of the northeast had been under a flood watch since dawn.  No, I  reminded my son.  We were not part of the northeast.  We were in western New York state, which was different than central New York state, which was different than upstate.   You'd have to have lived here long enough to understand the differences. 

It's all part of that New York state of  mind.

There was no sign of it letting up.  The rain.  It fell with a determined consistency, pooling into ponds that waffled across traffic lanes, splashing up under wheel wells as commuter traffic, close on each other's heels, fanned out across dark ribbons of highways and back roads.  Heading home.

I'll be smart, I say to  myself as I ease out of the driveway.  Turning left instead of right at the end of my street,  I head for the entrance to the park outside of the village.  I can cut through it, snaking around the canal, avoiding the village traffic, to get to Route 250 on the north side of town.

My car smells faintly of candle scents.  Rain slaps the windshield,  slides off the hood. 

Passing the vocational school complex on my left, I come up over a slight rise in the road, and slow down.  The red lights of the railroad crossing bars are already flashing, the red and white bars coming down.   The line of cars that had been threading through this easy detour now slows to a stop as a freight train lumbers past, headed east. 

Patience.  Always when I have some place that I want to be quickly, I find myself in a line of cars, watching the west-to-east or east-to-west movement of a freight train on its own forward path to someplace else.   No matter my intention,  my journey abruptly stops.  

Soon enough,  the last box car clears the intersection.  As the safety bars automatically raise and I cross the tracks,   I find myself missing the caboose car.  Remember cabooses?  When I was a child,  caboose cars were those funny-looking train cars that looked like houses.  They were the last car. The end of the line.  The necessary period. 

How could you know if you were at the end of the line, without the caboose car? 

Turning onto Whitney Road,  my car joins yet another line of bumper-to-bumper cars, all of us heading east.  

Finally, at the next traffic signal, I make a left turn and head north on Rt 250.   The skies are still ponderously grey.  But, since it's approaching the dinner hour,  it doesn't seem as quite so bleek as it did earlier in the day.

Traffic moves pretty quickly.  It's a straight shot north until I hit the 104 corridor.  The tires on Alice's car hum.   Farmer's fields fan out to my right, lined up on the opposite side of the road from the relatively new YMCA,  Grossman's nurserey, then more fields.  

I'm headed towards the village of Webster,  where,  its residents like to say, "life is worth living."

I'm floating somewhere in that zen of driving where nothing exists but the present moment.  As  I cross one intersection,  suddenly, without warning,  a sable-marked,  large German shepherd  lopes off the side of the road into the  path of on-coming cars. 

He's good-sized.  You can tell, from his movements that he's startled to find himself here.   He's wary,  trying to judge where to place his feet given the cars all around him.   He's not in control, but he's not frantically out-of-control either.  But, he's out-of-sorts.  Unsure.

In an instant,  there's an invisible sense of community that flows from the now slowed down traffic.   Drivers are aware of the close proximity of this dog - and the ebb and flow of traffic hiccups around him.

It's too dangerous to stop and it's dangerous not to.  But no one does.  We slow down, giving the dog room to navigate the road. 

He holds his head a bit low with his tail down, not scared down.  As I watch,  in my rearview mirror,  he straddles the line that splits the road.  Cars are mindful.  But, he's not home free yet.

What set of circumstances brought this gorgeous dog to this exact place and time?  Did he get loose from his yard?  Where is his owner?  Why is he not safely inside? 

What will happen to him?

This image and these questions will haunt me for the rest of the night and will tug at my heart for years to come.  

Over the years,  I've stored up similar images of lost dogs that appear seemingly out of nowhere to run alongside roads.   Two weeks ago, I was driving south along Route 250 and out of the corner of my eye, saw a Boxer come bounding down the street headed into traffic.  He was a big boy too, just like the shepherd.  Uncropped ears,  chest out, and, there, around his neck, was the invisible fence collar.

And, just like the shepherd,  it was dangerous to stop.  Dangerous not to.  But no one did.

Once (maybe twice), my own dogs have been those lost dogs.  Not through deliberate carelessness but from accidents.  A leash that snapped.  An opening in a fence that we didn't know was there.   My dogs came back.  They came back because of the kindness of a stranger who found my female greyhound making her way down Commercial Street in East Rochester while my frantic husband drove back home, knowing he'd have to tell me that he'd lost my dog.

My Great Dane made it a short distance down the street where one of the neighborhood kids got him into a yard with a fence and shut him safely inside. 

Years ago, as I drove over the canal bridge,  a majestic grey Weimeramer appeared out of the early morning mists rising off of the water.  Statuesque.  Completely still.  He stood his ground, met my eye and watched my car drive slowly past.

Turning around, he made his way back to wherever he'd come from.  Away from the road.  Back to the canal path.

Lost dogs.   They appear, seemingly out of nowhere.  For a moment,  they suspend time.   Make us catch our breath.

And then, just as quickly as they seared their presence into our hearts and minds,  they're gone.  Fleeting reminders that we must guard what we love because there are no guarantees.  What we have and hold one day can disappear in a moment. 

Gone.

Filling our very souls with absence.

 

 

 

Dancin' In The Dark

Up at 5AM,  I slowly push the back door open and,  with an eye warily looking for the resident toad that lives in a patch of weeds alongside the house,  I step out into a light rain with two of my dogs.

It is pitch dark.  Darker days are coming as it's almost the end of September and the celestial heavens have already begun that ancient march to winter.   Yesterday, at this same time,  when I looked up at the sky,  the stars were still brilliant in their pin pricks of light.   Today, there was inky blackness. 

Josephine prances across the wet lawn to find the perfect spot to squat and pee.  Tessa, securely leashed,  because she's little and black and would be impossible to keep track of if she bounded away from me,  has to make do with the distance she can travel while teathered to me.

And, yes, the yard is fenced.

This is the hour of dancin' in the dark.  When  the neighbors sleep.  When the neighborhood dogs are all inside and the outdoor stillness is a balm to my spirit.  When no one will see if I shake and shimmy as a warm up to my happy dance  in celebration of this one, perfect moment in time.

Homeward Bound - Adopting Ex-Racing Greyhounds/Part Four

Thanksgiving, two years after we adopted our first ex-racing greyhound.  There was snow on the ground and the air was chilled. More on the way. Inside, standing in front of the stove, I was toasty warm.  Looking out the window over the kitchen sink, I caught glimpses of two dogs ambling slowly around the yard.

My husband and JF, a family friend, were keeping an eye on things, bundled into down parkas, hands shoved into pockets. 

By this time, we had two 'hounds:  Comanche and Giza.  Giza was white with a blue-brindle patch on one side of her body with similar blue-brindle striping on her face. 

Suddenly, our friend let out a war whoop followed by a "Holy @!#% !" punctuated by the hard-scrabble noises of dog pads scrambling over crusted snow.  A rabbit had (somehow) gotten inside our fenced yard and the dogs had zeroed in on it in less time than it takes to snap your fingers.

Two lean, mean, speed machines whipped into warp speed.  They came close, but, in the end, the rabbit disappeared through a small hole near the bottom of the fence line.  The entire episode had taken place in less than three minutes.  Their sides heaving like bellows, the dogs stood, tongues panting, eyes sparkling. JF, for once in his life, was speechless.

Like us, he'd lived with dogs and knew quite a bit about different breeds. This, however, was his first "up close and personal" experience with the instinctive, prey-drive of greyhounds on the hunt.

When JF had recovered his equilibrium, I described what these dogs looked like coming out of racing boxes on a track. Truly, their bodies are built for speed with double-hinged spines allowing their four legs to bow under their core body - literally coming up off the ground twice. Once when they fold their legs underneath them, and again when they stretch full out.

Two lengths out from the starting box, a racing greyhound is clocked at 40 miles per hour.  They're sprinters,  capable of running 5/16th's of a mile in under 30 seconds. Somewhere in my vast library, I have a smallish paperback book describing how greyhounds were imported to the United States to help ranchers kill coyotes.  This was well before greyhound race tracks started popping up all over the country.

Greyhounds run in packs and the grainy, black and white photographs in this book are dramatic illustrations of what these dogs are capable of.  

The catch-22 is that greyhounds are wonderfully sweet and docile when they are lounging around and not lazer-focused on some fast-moving object.  One of the most challenging aspects of placing ex-racing hounds into pet homes was explaining these two seemingly contradictory aspects of sighthound temperament to people who had no dog experience.

If we were placing a dog in a home with children, we wanted to make sure that the dog's temperament was suitable. No responsible rescue organization ever promises that the dogs they place into homes will never bite.  That's just not realistic. However, we did as much as we could before the actual placement to assure ourselves that we'd chosen the appropriate dog for its new home.

Typically, we placed dogs into temporary foster homes to evaluate their temperaments.  Dogs exhibiting high prey-drive or a nervous, skittish disposition were designated for homes without cats and, sometimes, without children. 

Pet homes were evaluated on an individual basis in those beginning years.  Ideally, we preferred homes with fenced yards.  However, depending on the lifestyle of the individual or family, we waived this criteria. 

Families with children were always the wild card.  Almost without exception, we required these families to have fenced yards. 

Much later, we would find ourselves having heated discussions about the realities of placing dogs in homes where there were children under the age of 10.  Some of us drew a hard line on this issue, feeling that there was less risk for a dog bite if the kids in a home were over the age of 10.  This had more to do with the fact that kids 10 years old and older are relatively tall in stature - tall enough to look down at a dog instead of looking up. 

We did as much as we could before placing a dog to assure ourselves that we'd chosen the most appropriate dog for its new home.  We hoped we had enough checks and balances built into our foster program to  minimize any risk to the adopting families and to the dogs themselves.

How successful were we?  During the seven year period that I was the Volunteer Director, we placed approximately 200 ex-racing greyhounds in pet homes throughout numerous counties in the western part of New York state.  Out of those 200 dogs, I honestly believe that the only dog we euthanized, while in foster care, was a two year old, fawn male.

This dog exhibited no alarming behavior during the transport from New Hampshire into New York.  Unfortunately, in the first 48 hours of being in foster care,  he bit 10 times.  He bit a twelve year old boy and he bit the mom.  When one of our organization's most experienced volunteers went to the foster home to remove the dog, she was bitten so severely that she had to go to the nearest emergency center for stitches that same night.

We quarantined the dog with one of the local vet's offices while we attempted to interpret correctly and in context, the circumstances surrounding the dog bites.  We knew that 10 bites in such a short amount of time was a huge red flag for being able to safely place this animal in a home.

And, we asked ourselves how we could confidently place this one into any home.

It took us three days to evaluate what we were hearing from all of the people involved in this incident.  What we realized was that this dog bit without giving any warning signals.  Most dogs start with a lesser action before the actual bit happens.  For example, you'll hear a low growl or you see teeth barred. A dog's posture becomes part of the equation offering more visual signals that an animal feels stressed or threatened.

My point is that most dogs have a reason to bite regardless of whether we (the humans) agree with that action.  In most cases, there are predictors in a dog's behavior that lead up to the bite.

By the time we had sifted through all of the testimonies, we felt that what we had on our hands was a dog that was unpredictable and so presented a danger to humans and to himself.  Given our conclusion, we didn't feel that we could place this dog in any home.

Sadly, we made the decision to euthanize him.

Not so surprisingly, this was an uncomfortable decision among the volunteers in our organization.  The foster family wanted to keep this dog as their pet, explaining that they would protect him.  Our experienced volunteer, the woman who had gone to the foster home to pick up the dog after the first biting incidence, and had been severely bitten herself, argued that the dog's unpredictability turned him into a walking time bomb. Ten bits in that short amount of time, suggested an escalation in aggression.

None of us had the professional experience to analyze and work with this kind of severe dog behavior.  The best we could do was to acknowledge that this was unsafe behavior in the extreme.

Returning him to the race track wasn't an option either. He'd come into the adoption program and legally, he was our responsibility. He'd washed out as a racer.  The kennel he came from wasn't going to want to take him back.  Neither could we return him to the track adoption holding kennel when we had determined that he wasn't adoptable under any circumstances.

In the end, we waited the ten days that New York requires a dog be held in quarantine for biting. He stayed in a comfortable, inside dog run and was around an experienced staff. 

No one was happy about the decision we'd made but none of us could see how we could change our minds.  The night before the euthanasia procedure was to take place, I called the vet's office to arrange to be there. When I got off the phone, I sorted through papers in a desk drawer searching for a document that belonged to my dad when he was a cadet at the United States Military Academy.  I'd found it years ago and referred to it often in dark times.

It was a copy of the cadet's prayer and the lines I was searching for are these:

Make us choose the harder right instead of the easier wrong and never ... be content with a half truth when the whole truth can be won.

The "easier wrong" would be to ignore this dog's dangerous behavior and to place him with the foster family that was clamoring to have him.  Those of us who held core leadership positions in this volunteer organization agreed that the risks were too great; that this young dog would bite again was a certainty.

The "harder right" was accepting that this was an unsafe dog for placement. And, accepting that, the next step was to humanely euthanize him. 

He died in one of the examination rooms at the vet's office.  Three of the staff technicians, myself and the vet who administered the drugs that would first sedate and then stop this dog's heart, were all in the room.  As the dog slipped into unconsciousness, all of our hands were placed on his body to help ease him to the floor.  In another brief moment, he was gone.

Homeward Bound - Adopting Ex-Racing Greyhounds/Part Three

Once we'd agreed to help transport two dogs, the waiting game to adopt our ex-racing greyhound was about to end. 

Our part of the transport was to drive the section of the New York state thruway east of Rochester, almost to Syracuse and pick up two greyhounds - ours and one that was being placed in a home outside of Buffalo. On the return trip, we'd drive almost two hours beyond our thruway exit to the outskirts of Buffalo  where a volunteer for the  greyhound adoption program would meet us to pick up that second dog.

Then, we'd drive home.

All of this took place one summer which meant that we had great driving weather.  Clear, sunny skies and a straight stretch of highway that cut through corn fields and rolling farm land. 

Less than two hours after we started out, we left the highway and headed south on a two-lane country road.  The house we were looking for was a log cabin set back from the road a distance that might have equalled five or six football fields.

Another thirty minutes of driving and we arrived.  The front door banged open and a woman with a welcoming smile stepped out to meet us.  This was Connie. She would become one of my best friends over the next seven years as we both became head-over-heels involved with this ex-racing greyhound adoption organization.

Connie was (she still is) a walking, talking dog encyclopedia.  She'd been a Doberman fancier for years, competing in obedience trials and putting more titles on her dogs than God has converts.  She had been figuring out dog behavior all of her life.  There wasn't too much that she didn't know about dogs.  What she didn't know, she wanted to learn.

We were alike in this respect.  Neither of us had ever lived with sighthounds - the family of dog that greyhounds belong to.  However,  Connie had attended dog shows for years and had at least seen the various breeds that belong to this dog category.

Not me.  Connie was about to introduce me to my second greyhound.

She led us around to the back of her house.  Opening the gate that led into her fenced back yard, she pointed to a smaller, fenced off section:  a kennel-like enclosure.  Connie opened an inner gate so that I could walk inside. 

As the gate swung open, trotting out of the well-proportioned dog house inside the enclosure, was a doe-eyed, sleek, muscular, fawn greyhound, grinning widely at all of us.

He was approximately 80 pounds, which was relatively large for this breed.  His calm and engagingly happy disposition was his calling card and would be what endeared him to everyone he would meet.  Life would always be good for this three year old guy!

Standing in Connie's backyard drinking in the sheer beauty of this dog, I was dumbfounded.  Comanche was gorgeous - so completely different in physical appearance from Diamond, our Great Dane, that I knew my heart wouldn't crumble into pieces every time I looked at him.

Hi nsame was Zia Comanche.  The "Zia" was the prefix - the identifier back to the breeder.  We would drop that part of his name and keep Comanche.  It was the perfect name for a dog that would go on to help introduce over 200 families in the Rochester area to the greyhound adoption program.

That, and much more, was all ahead of us.

Homeward Bound - Adopting Ex-Racing Greyhounds/Part Two

I still remember my emotional response when I saw my first ex-racing greyhound.  Besotted describes how I felt and that feeling struck me with a lazer intensity that seared my physical being. How could there be such a beautiful dog breed and I not know about it? And, more to the point, how long would it take for me to have one? 

And so I waited for that phone call - the one that would put me in touch with the adoption organization that brought ex-racing greyhounds into the Syracuse, Rochester and Buffalo areas of New York.

My phone rang two days later and a woman I would come to know very well over the next two years, introduced herself to me.  Did I have a few minutes to speak with her?  A few minutes stretched into an hour.

We talked about our individual experiences as dog owners.  Like me, this woman had euthanized dogs she had loved with a fierce intensity, shattering her heart into thousands of pieces.  She understood when I explained that my family couldn't bear having another Great Dane for our next dog.  We liked large breed dogs and, if we fit the criteria that her organization required, we were interested in adopting a large, male ex-racing greyhound.

Now, it was her turn to ask questions.  Did we have cats?  What did we know about crate training? Was our yard fenced?  Yes to the first two questions and no to the last question.

We'd used a crate with Diamond.  We weren't opposed to fencing if that was one of the conditions for adopting a dog.  We weren't particularly concerned with the dog's coat color - temperament and size topped our wish list. 

We had impeccable vet references and were knowledgeable about dog behavior given our experiences with taking Diamond to dog obedience classes.  Before we ended that first call, we also talked about who we were getting the dog for.  I explained that my husband and I were the dog lovers.  The dog would be for us. Our son would get to enjoy, second-hand, what it was like to have a dog as part of the family.  However, he was much too young, at four years of age, to be in any way responsible for a dog.

That phone call was our "home visit".  The woman I spoke with had heard enough in our first conversation to assuage any red flags about our suitability as a pet home.

After receiving our written adoption application and checking our vet references, she called again and explained how the adoption process would work going forward.  Finally, we were ready for the next step.

Waiting.

We put the time to good use. We bought a large, vari-kennel dog crate and got estimates for having our very spacious side yard fenced. And, we waited.

Three weeks later, we received another call.  Our dog, a three year old, fawn male, named Commanche, was ready for transport.  Would we be willing to help out with that transport by picking up our dog along with a female dog that needed to be driven almost two hours west of where we lived?