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One of the posts in the Facebook group inspired my husband and me to start talking about names for the new girl, when she comes along. We're thinking maybe Vastra, after the reptilian character from Doctor Who. If that ends up being her name I will totally buy a green faux croc leather from Sexy Beast for her 
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Aug 15, 2013 01:13
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Thanks for sharing, skoolmunkee, that was great. I remembered and loved Union.
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Aug 15, 2013 01:43
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skoolmunkee posted:The first time Union really barked she scared herself and she ran upstairs. Oh my goodness. I think the bandana mosaic is a neat idea.
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Aug 15, 2013 02:59
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skoolmunkee posted:Union I hope you're doing okay without Union, Skoolmunkee. She sounds like a really special and awesome dog, and I know it's been tough when I've lost dogs in the past. In Jet news however, I had a moment of introspection about how well he's doing when my Mum visited. I hadn't noticed all the small things about how he was adjusting to the home, just the big things like him coming to me for fusses, or just recently plonking his head on top of my mouse hand when I'm on the computer for attention. When Mum visited she commented on how well he was doing and how open he had become compared to when I first got him, and she was right. He now wags his tail a whole lot more, he'll come up to you, sniff you and headbutt you when you get home. He responds to my voice in a lot of different, small ways, and he looks to me to make sure things are alright. Just little things, like hearing another dog barking in the distance when we're in the garden, but it's a great sign of progress that I just hadn't noticed until now. The best thing was when me and Mum were talking, she was watching him, and he'd get this little twitch of a wag at the end of his tail when I was talking. So drat cute, now that I see it.
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Aug 15, 2013 08:59
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RazorBunny posted:One of the posts in the Facebook group inspired my husband and me to start talking about names for the new girl, when she comes along. We're thinking maybe Vastra, after the reptilian character from Doctor Who. If that ends up being her name I will totally buy a green faux croc leather from Sexy Beast for her This raises a question: how easy is it to rename a greyhound that's a few years old? Are they to used to what the rescue is calling them to change easily? How do you even go about training a dog to recognize a new name in the first place?
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Aug 15, 2013 13:32
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Nice Davis posted:This raises a question: how easy is it to rename a greyhound that's a few years old? Are they to used to what the rescue is calling them to change easily? How do you even go about training a dog to recognize a new name in the first place? Any dog's name can be changed, it isn't part of what they consider themselves, just something they respond a certain way to. To teach a new name just use it mostly. Give the dog rewards for reacting to the new name, ears perking up, eye contact, orienting to face you, and coming to you. Of course, I use the dog's name with an implicit 'come' command, but you can always stop short of that. If you need more advice, the training thread can help, and has a section of its OP for names iirc. Cluncho McChunk fucked around with this message at 16:13 on Aug 15, 2013 |
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Aug 15, 2013 13:35
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In our case, Husker came basically straight from the track and any future dog from the same rescue will be the same way - they don't foster, just do behavior analysis at the rescue kennel on-site, and they don't give the dogs new names. Trainers and handlers (at least at our local track, I can't speak for every racing kennel) don't really call the dogs by name at the track, and racing names are generally kind of long and unwieldy. Husker's name was To Tell the Truth. We just said his new name a lot and associated it with positive things, and eventually he'd perk his ears up at his name even if he was asleep. Trauma Tank is right that you can change any dog's name. My sister has successfully taught her new dog the name they picked for him, and he went by something else for three years. I think it was especially easy in our situation because Husker didn't really have a call name. I'm not sure they realize that it's their name, per se. For all I know, he thought I was saying "Hey!" every time.  A friend forwarded us a link last night to two bonded greyhound girls who need a new home, and I kind of immediately shut down  It's too soon. They turned out to be not cat safe, so it's a moot point for us, but it definitely showed me that I'm not ready. I still think about Husker every single day.
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Aug 15, 2013 16:01
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 Bean's coat is so pretty in person, but it doesn't show up well in pictures. Some pretty brindles in the thread! People tell me all the time that they've never seen a greyhound "that color" but when I went to meet her all of the dogs I met had brindle coats.
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Aug 24, 2013 04:27
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Ahahaha. Given that Adam was racing as recently as April down in St. Petersburg, his coat is pretty poo poo right now, but I look forward to late winter-ish, when he'll get his next coat and hopefully get a bit more hair on his underside. In other news, I'm about a month in with Adam, and oh man definitely he's showing a lot more personality now, both at home and outside too. I finally found a good trigger for him to run full-speed -- I noticed while walking him around the local park that he took a major interest in frisbees, and so I took him to the dog park and started throwing one around with my friend, and Oh man he runs real fast! Sadly I have no photos (trying to take a picture of a greyhound running is deceptively hard), but it was really gratifying to see.
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Aug 24, 2013 05:05
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Are you brushing him? I found that frequent brushing during the crappy track coat phase helped a lot. I bought a soft curry comb and a face finishing brush, both intended for horses, and it worked much better than any of the dog brushes I've tried. Plus he really liked it 
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Aug 24, 2013 15:40
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RazorBunny posted:Are you brushing him? I found that frequent brushing during the crappy track coat phase helped a lot. I bought a soft curry comb and a face finishing brush, both intended for horses, and it worked much better than any of the dog brushes I've tried. Plus he really liked it I noticed all the dogs at the rescue had a hilariously bare rear end. I'm assuming it fills in later after some coddling in a proper home?
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Aug 27, 2013 16:38
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various cheeses posted:I noticed all the dogs at the rescue had a hilariously bare rear end. I'm assuming it fills in later after some coddling in a proper home? Normally, yeah. Jet has a couple of bare-ish patches on his thighs where they touch the ground most when he lies down and he's currently shedding like mad. He spends most of his time on either the sofa or a couple of memory foam beds with soft covers, so it may just be a fact of life that there'll be patches where the fur rubs away a bit due to greyhounds being as thin-furred as they are.
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Aug 27, 2013 17:30
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Mona grew a little hair back, but her stomach and back of her legs are completely bald.
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Aug 27, 2013 17:47
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SUPER HASSLER posted:Ahahaha. Given that Adam was racing as recently as April down in St. Petersburg, his coat is pretty poo poo right now, but I look forward to late winter-ish, when he'll get his next coat and hopefully get a bit more hair on his underside. Trick with frisbees and sighthounds: roll it on the ground as hard and as fast as you can get it. They'll chase them down, hopefully pick them up. From there, once they get used to mouthing it from a ground take, you can working on catching from the air.
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Aug 27, 2013 18:40
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And while on the expensive side, try these: http://www.amazon.com/s/?ie=UTF8&ke...sl_3wu60gbjxd_b The afghans don't like hard frisbees, but love these. We have 4 of them that have lasted about 10 years. They also don't hurt when your derpy afghan doesn't open its mouth and gets hit in the head by it.
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Aug 27, 2013 18:48
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various cheeses posted:I noticed all the dogs at the rescue had a hilariously bare rear end. I'm assuming it fills in later after some coddling in a proper home? Husker eventually had long, fluffy butt hair. It looked very silly. But he always had a bare patch on his tail and his belly ranged from mildly fuzzy in the winter to naked in the summer.
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Aug 29, 2013 14:34
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My boy Petey turns 11 on the 8th, it's also the 6th month anniversary of his adoption day. What indulgences can I feed a farty old man with a sensitive tummy for his birthday?
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Sep 3, 2013 21:37
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What a lovely boy. :3 You only adopted him 6 months ago? What is his story?
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Sep 3, 2013 22:34
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alucinor posted:What indulgences can I feed a farty old man with a sensitive tummy for his birthday? Yogurt! Unsweetened, unflavored, regular-fat yogurt. It's very gentle on the guts (and even beneficial!) and dogs seem to really love the stuff.
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Sep 3, 2013 23:00
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RazorBunny posted:Yogurt! Unsweetened, unflavored, regular-fat yogurt. It's very gentle on the guts (and even beneficial!) and dogs seem to really love the stuff. Excellent. He loves canned pumpkin too so maybe an unsweetened pumpkin-yogurt smoothie "cake". skoolmunkee posted:What a lovely boy. :3 You only adopted him 6 months ago? What is his story? We started looking in February. I was raised with wolfhounds and IGs, but these are the first dogs either of us (40 yr olds) have owned as adults, so we were planning on looking for a long time and taking it really slow. I had mentally put a fall timeline on adoption. A week after our interview we got an email about 2 new dogs who had showed up in the rescue - an 8 year old and a 10.5 year old. They had been adopted, lived together for 5 years, and then their owners got divorced. The rescue couldn't find a foster to take them both, so they separated them. Petey, the old one, ended up as a single dog and apparently wasn't very happy about it. So despite the fact that we wanted to start with a single, smaller female, suddenly we had two giant boys:  Best decision ever. They are good boys in every way imaginable. They aren't super friendly or playful with each other like most social animals are - but goddamn do they freak out when they are separated. I'm really glad we could get them back together.
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Sep 4, 2013 15:05
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Speaking of birthdays and needing to eat burgers, once a year Atticus and Sassafras each get a burger. They seem to enjoy it.  They're not in any danger of getting fat any time soon, despite the fact that they eat and take naps all day. 
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Sep 5, 2013 22:41
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gameday posted:Speaking of birthdays and needing to eat burgers, once a year Atticus and Sassafras each get a burger. They seem to enjoy it. Oh god, how do you stand the unholy dogfarts that must ensue?
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Sep 6, 2013 23:02
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Serella posted:Oh god, how do you stand the unholy dogfarts that must ensue? They're greyhounds, gas from the bowels of hell is situation normal.
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Sep 7, 2013 17:09
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Serella posted:Oh god, how do you stand the unholy dogfarts that must ensue? I hold them backwards like Scarface and point them out into the backyard, firing until the levels are out of the danger zone.
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Sep 10, 2013 20:31
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 dat bunny.
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Sep 10, 2013 20:57
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So, I don't have pictures right now but can probably get some later if it would help, but I need some reassurance for Jet's First Moult. He's losing a lot of fur, which I wasn't worried about at first, but now his belly/underside of his chest is more or less bald, and his thighs are starting to look threadbare, although he already had worn patches from where his butt rubs the ground while lying around the place. I know greyhounds are fairly thin-furred regardless, but wasn't expecting him to have a bald belly, please reassure me that this is normal moult stuff and not my dog going horrendously bald. 
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Sep 16, 2013 15:32
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He's probably fine I've known lots of greyhounds with bald bellies. Some were just bald in the summer months, others year round. Just enjoy the weird smooth belly skin. Edit: If he starts having scaly skin, dark splotches, or weight gain, he might have hypothyroidism. It's not the end of the world if he does, though - it's a very manageable issue. RazorBunny fucked around with this message at 15:52 on Sep 16, 2013 |
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Sep 16, 2013 15:49
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It's pretty normal to have balding on a greyhound. Mona's belly and back of her legs are completely bald: Once she starts to shed, she sheds a huge amount of fur, and the bald area gets a bit bigger (or at least so thin, it seems to be bigger).
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Sep 16, 2013 22:41
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I hope Italian Greyhounds count. Meet Burnie, half IG half Sheltie and parts of other things found on the street. He came from the local human society when he was 6 months and freshly fixed. As far as we know, he was just a stray found on the street. He's also mostly dumb.   
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Sep 20, 2013 18:30
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Do any of you guys have experiences with the Saluki breed? I have been doing a lot of research on them lately, they seem like they are very similar to Greyhounds but they come from Arabia and they look absolutely beautiful.   The only thing holding me back about getting one is that I will be moving to New York again soon. I know they have dog-run parks where you can unleash a dog in a fenced off area and can run its heart out. I also work from home so I think I will be able to walk the dog enough.
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Sep 20, 2013 19:18
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I've just got a lurcher (seems Collie is his pastoral herder blood. Merle with quite Amber eyes with a few spots of blue in one of them) from a rescue centre this week, a lot of people walking their dogs seem to be scared he is going to munch on the little things.  Although he has got excited when little dogs run near him. I can't tell if he just wants to play some of the times. He whines when he wants to get near other dogs and drags on the lead. Sometimes if he kicks of into a run he seems to make a growly noise but I'm not sure if this is because of him pulling hard on his neck.
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Sep 25, 2013 21:01
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It doesn't sound like he's any danger to anyone, but it does sound like he's got some self control issues that could escalate, or at the very least are kind of annoying. Consider reading Control Unleashed: The Puppy Program by Leslie McDevitt for some self control exercises. It's geared towards sport dogs but anyone can get some good stuff out of it. http://www.dogwise.com/ItemDetails.cfm?ID=DTB1242
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Sep 25, 2013 21:17
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Thanks, I was looking into getting a training book or two and that one looks decent. Going to save a bit of money for some dog training classes with him to.
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Sep 25, 2013 21:57
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One thing I'd definitely start working on is a loose-leash walk in a higher distraction setting. It sounds to me like he's just a frustrated greeter, and helping him not ramp himself up to an unhealthy fixation will go a long way toward nipping the behavior in the bud before it gets to reactivity level. Lots of practice with things like "leave it" at home will also help - I like playing the leave it game of walking past a line-up of delicious items on a leash in the house before taking it "on the road."
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Sep 25, 2013 23:47
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After a few weeks of delay due to lots of work travel for the two of us, my girlfriend and I finally mailed our application off to REGAP. 
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Sep 26, 2013 05:05
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So I'm about 90% sure that I will adopt a greyhound sometime (as in the next few months, not right away) after I return to the USA next week. However, the group I'm looking to adopt from notes "not suitable for apartment" after pretty much every dog on their website. I will be looking for work in the Seattle area so will absolutely be living in an apartment, but I was under the impression greyhounds do pretty well in an apartment. Just to be sure thought maybe I'd check with you guys. I guess what I'm most concerned about is how greyhounds deal with being alone in an apartment alone for standard 8 hour work shifts.
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Sep 30, 2013 15:47
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HappyHelmet posted:So I'm about 90% sure that I will adopt a greyhound sometime (as in the next few months, not right away) after I return to the USA next week. I'd imagine most of them would probably be fine. You may need to do some adjustment with pee schedules/etc for a few weeks as they will likely be used to eliminating more often at the rescue. You'd be well served by coming home at lunch time if possible, or having someone check in with the dog and take it out. The rescue I got Jet from asked that I come home from work at lunch to let him out each day, and that schedule works well for Jet. Some days he doesn't pee when I come home at midday, and so he could probably be fine with being left for a whole work day, but on the whole it seems a safer option to come home at midday, given that we had a few issues the first few weeks home.
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Sep 30, 2013 19:42
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Trauma Tank posted:I'd imagine most of them would probably be fine. You may need to do some adjustment with pee schedules/etc for a few weeks as they will likely be used to eliminating more often at the rescue. You'd be well served by coming home at lunch time if possible, or having someone check in with the dog and take it out. Ah, yeah that sounds like a good idea. I'll have to keep that in mind when I start looking around. Thanks for the information.
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Oct 1, 2013 01:03
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Enigma89 posted:Do any of you guys have experiences with the Saluki breed? I have been doing a lot of research on them lately, they seem like they are very similar to Greyhounds but they come from Arabia and they look absolutely beautiful. They're pretty cool dogs. Kinda like afghans but with a little less sense of humor, a little more spooky/prissy. Salukis were bred to only ever take hare or gazelle, but afghans took poo poo that would fight back which makes them a bit more robust/confident in the temperament department. We homed one of our afghan puppies to a lady in NYC in an apt. She skates/scooters with Arya daily for miles around the city, takes her to dog parks and has taught her to respect an e-collar so she can be in off-lead areas of the public park. If you want to contact her about living in NYC with a large sighthound, here's her FB: https://www.facebook.com/diana.kassir?fref=ts Here's Arya offlead somewhere in upstate NY.  
SachielDVangel fucked around with this message at 23:11 on Oct 1, 2013 |
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Oct 1, 2013 23:08
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HappyHelmet posted:So I'm about 90% sure that I will adopt a greyhound sometime (as in the next few months, not right away) after I return to the USA next week. Bean seems content with apartment life. I used to check on her at lunch but after a while she just seemed irritated that I woke her up and didn't want to go out so now I usually leave her alone from 8-430 without incident or accident. She always gets a long walk in the morning and we go to the dog park 4 times a week. Some groups have their own ideas about what makes a good home for a greyhound. The first group I talked to didn't say they didn't adopt to apartments but did say they only adopted to people who had fenced-in yards because some dogs are shy and won't go potty on a leash. I talked to another group that said that sounded like a silly reason and even if they did have a dog that wouldn't go potty on a leash they just wouldn't place him anywhere without a fenced-in yard, not reject all apartment-dwellers. Also, unless the group you're looking at has a lot of dogs listed I think it's unlikely they're listing every dog they have to place- the group I wound up working with only posted info about 5 or 6 dogs at a time. I would contact the group anyway- if they don't have a dog for you now they might find one later, or else they may be able to point you toward other groups in the area who might be able to help you.
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Oct 2, 2013 01:19
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