Dec 26 2004
Cutter The Dog
A friend asked me to take care of their dog today. My daughter and I arrived at the house around 9am, geting the house key from the secret location (mailbox), and let outselves in where Cutter greeted us by knocking us over.
Cutter is a greyhound, an odd looking breed: tall, spindly legs - all bones and slick muscle, like a long-distance runner’s physique. He’s about 50 pounds and hard as a rock, but a friendly dog.
I put the leash on him and placed the door’s key on the banister inside, thinking we won’t be going far to walk him so we won’t need to lock the door. After I leave the house with the dog I remember: the field to walk him in is about 10 minutes away, so I better lock the door. I turn the door knob, and it doesn’t open. Oh, fuck. It’s one of those “modern” door knobs that open by turning the key one way, and unlocking it by turning it the other. I turned it the wrong way. So now I have a dog on my hands. Great. So we go for our walk, then drive home with the dog.
I have two cats. They’re not my cats. They’re my wife’s. Fred and Jah are their names. They don’t like humans, let alone dogs. Fortunately I have a fenced-in backyard, so I let Cutter run around lose there most of the day. The dog and cats had a staring match through a window, which freaked the cats out and caused Cutter to run like mad in circles around a tree; but otherwise, it went well. Cutter’s home now, and my daughter wants a dog.
P.S. For information on how to adopt a Greyhound, or even why Greyhounds are singled out for special adoption programs, visit these sites: Adopt A Greyhound, The Greyhound Adoption Center, Greyhound Pets of America.
Minor correction: He’s 75 lbs. Thanks for taking care of him for us, Jody. Nice pic of Cutter & Caitlyn. If any of your readers are exploring the idea of adopting a Greyhound, they can email me directly to ryanweagle@gmail.com. We found that the adoption organizations are great for providing information about the breed before you adopt, however the info is a bit one-sided because they don’t want to tell you the “bad stuff” about the breed. We adopted through# Ryanon 30 Dec 2004 at 11:17 am
My “a href” tag didn’t come through in that previous post. I wanted to include the URL to the adoption organization for GPAC. It’s http://www.gpac.com.
Oops! Wrong URL. It’s http://www.gpac.ca
I’ve seen similar organizations for beagles. Must be from hunters who use their dogs for hunting and then “depose” of them once they get too slow. A friend of mine when I was growing up had a beagle that was half blind and deaf for years. I can’t imagine that dog ever moving fast, but apparently it must have at one time.
So what’s the “bad stuff” in regard to grey hounds?