Baby Greyhound

With so many questions about greyhounds right now, I thought I would write about a few of my own. I have owned 29 greyhounds. 20 out of 29 became AA's. (very good) 2 of those were stakes dogs. Out of the 9 left 3 were fighters (that means that they picked on dogs on the track so the track wouldn't let them race). The other 6 were injured as pups in one way or another and were placed in good homes (as were all my dogs when they were finished racing).

Baby Greyhound had by far the best personality of any greyhound (or other dog for that matter) that I ever saw - and I have seen thousands of them. She was so named because at 5 weeks of age she had a perfect greyhound figure. Here was this cute little greyhound running around in the middle of her 8 brothers and sisters and they all looked like little hound dogs . I thought this was a good thing, little did I know what was to be.

In addition to having the best personality ever - she liked to talk and hold conversations with everyone she met - and she had the world's biggest smile. She was the ugliest, skinniest greyhound that I and all the trainers that I had contact with ever saw. Every time I would place her in a new kennel (she was slow) the trainer would always assure me that he could get weight on her. I would just smile because I had been trying to put weight on her for her whole life. Eventually they all gave up and just ran her like she was. She actually looked like something out of the movie "Nightmare before Christmas"! One time she was asleep in my hallway and I stepped over her not paying attention and I thought to myself, "who left that skeleton laying in the hallway!" (it was Halloween BTW)

When she was a puppy one of my neighbors came to me and told me "that dog is talking to me through the fence everyday." I thought she was full of it. Then I moved out to a farm and in the afternoon the dogs would lay under our trailer to escape the heat. You could hear Baby Greyhound just talking up a storm to the other dogs. It was hilarious. When she would go to weigh-in at the track all the lead outs would fight over who got to take care of her. At Palm Beach they wanted to make her the track mascot but decided against it because she was so ugly! Everyone who met her loved her but people also thought she was being starved because she was so skinny. It was her metabolism. I never turned down a morsel of food for that dog - she ate like a bottomless pit!

I took her home when she finished racing and kept her until she died years later. Everywhere I went if she wasn't with me then people wanted to know where she was. My friends Sis's mom (who was bedridden) adored her and kept sneaking her in the house much to Sis's chagrin. When Sis saw how happy Baby Greyhound made her mom though (she was the perfect height to pet from a hospital bed. She would lay her head on Donna's belly and talk to her while Donna petted her) she quit objecting.

This smiley looks like Baby Greyhound's smile. I just wish I could duplicate her voice. She sounded like Charlie Brown's Teacher.