Greyt Stories

*Counting Your Blessings*
- November 27, 2001

On Thanksgiving Day I emailed the Southeastern Greyhound Adoption in Atlanta, GA to say Thanks! for giving me a remarkably wonderful greyhound for my own. I think he is as happy as I am. It was love at first sight, it seems as if he's always been mine although this is his second home after the track. His former owner was forced to return him for re-adoption due to the fact his new job required him to travel throughout the week. Our only concern was Clipper's new relationship with my 8 month old Moluccan Cockatoo, Mulligan.

After a week and a half of strict supervision, and the usual curiosities, they have seemed to reach a mutual understanding of their roles in the family. I've shown each unique attention and love in the presence of the other, and it shows in the lack of the fear they initially exhibited. Last Monday morning I bathed Mulligan for his first Annual Avian Veterinarian visit. After toweling Mulligan expressed a desire to get close to Clipper. I lowered Mulligan and myself to the carpet and placed him on the floor next to the greyhound. He very confidently approached and stepped onto Clipper's front leg and proceeded to reach up and dangle the dog tags hanging from Clipper's dog tags.

It was as if he wanted to learn just who this animal is, and where did he come from? But that's just Clipper and all the love he gives to my home and neighborhood (neighbors and friends love him too, he's very politely approached each one). My neighbors, friends and family are happy I've found another dog to love. They all saw my grief after the recent loss of my beautiful, sweet white German Shepard. She lost her battle with Lymphoma after a year of chemotherapy. She died 3 months before her eighth birthday. I miss her so.

Mulligan began the healing process during the time I was researching the best breed for my lifestyle. But I really needed another dog, but not just any dog, I wanted just what I got: the most loving, cuddly, funny greyhound who needed me as much as I needed him.

Thanksgiving was a good time for me to count my blessings.
Arlene

Reposted from the Greyhound-L with permission
Date: Mon, 4 Jun 2001
Henry One Year Later

I want to tell you a love story. Really, it's two love stories: one continues on into the next. At the point where they meet, Henry comes into my house for the first time and heads straight into the empty bathtub, first parting the shower curtain gingerly with his long scarred nose. Just a gangly, country dog, nine years old, never had a home before, wandering around in mine. Maybe not grateful yet, but certainly quizzical and open to the possibility of This Being Good. That's how he introduced himself to his new surroundings one year ago. Oh, and then he peed, abundantly and in earnest, on the living room carpet.

Henry, along with Porgy and Cole, is a complete Lindsay dog now. At 10, he careens through his happy boyhood like a kid on a skateboard for the first time. He knocks things over, is forever bumping his head, is a stranger to fear, and has a delightful repertoire of thoroughly disgusting and endearing habits: drinking his water so fast that he blaps it all back up on the floor beside the water dish; raiding and distributing my dirty laundry (enough about that); kicking so hard in his sleep-races that I wake up with little bruises on my back (yes we are bed fellows).

Today, June 4th, will be his "gotcha day." I remember waking up that morning with that incomparable bliss we all know. I remember laughing at everything on the way out to the kennel. I was about to give my heart away again and it felt exhilarating, vulnerable, and blessed. I remember how Henry seemed to know exactly why I was there when I stepped into the kennel. I remember filling out the adoption forms and putting "Porgy" as my spouse's name. Wasn't even very funny, but I felt so out of my head with happiness. We picked out his favorite stuffy, a huge love-worn polar bear, and started our lives together.

Henry rode home in my arms with his chin resting against my chest. He has never, for a moment, seemed sad, traumatized or shy. He is here to give love with a light heart, a warm tongue, and a usually clumsy paw. By the day of the week -- first Monday in June -- today also marks the death of Rain, my first greyhound, two years ago. As I watch the canopies, banners, and rows and rows of rickety wooden chairs being assembled in Harvard Yard for yet another Commencement, I'm taken back. These are the symbols of the time of his passing. We wended our last walks through this festivity, a dog growing weaker and more tired every day until his final one, during a brutal heat wave, when he seemed to be looking beyond me, without fear, down a road I was not to travel with him.

I know how profoundly I will grieve when Henry, or Porgy or Cole, has to go. Losing Rain changed me, and the ways I was before are not available anymore. Fully experiencing terrible sorrow is like diving into cold, black waters, so deep you can't see the bottom. But you know there is life there and an alien, exquisite kind of beauty. The loss was like no other I had known, but in time I started feeling my way around and discovering so many gifts in it. And in the depths where there is, astonishingly, light, I found Henry.

Blessings to all,
Frannie Lindsay

Well it's the Fourth of July, but I don't have much to celebrate. I said goodbye to my foster girl Kacey today and it's breaking my heart. She was here for 5 months, and was a part of our home as if she'd always been here. It's hard, sometimes too hard, to let them go. This one will be the last for me for a while, life is getting too hectic, and my family / home need a break.

Am I sad because she may be the last, or because I love her, or both? I'll probably never know, what I do know is that it's not getting any easier, I miss her, my kids miss her, my dogs miss her and I think we all wish she could have stayed. Why did I let her go? Because, I had to, she needed a family of her own, and that couldn't be mine no matter how much I wanted it to be. She deserved to be loved unreservedly, to be allowed in the bed, on the couch and to get as close as she could to her people, *her* people. I wanted to be hers, and she mine, but it wasn't meant to be and so we said goodbye.

Some people say that every time a foster dog leaves, they take a piece of your heart with them, this was more than a piece it's like a huge whistling hole has been left behind with Kacey gone, I miss her. I know that she will be happy, that her family will love her (who could not - she's awesome!) and that in time she will not miss me anymore, and that I too will eventually not sit and cry every time I think of her. But today, now . . . it's not the case. Letting go is hard, even when it's for all the right reasons.

Just got some dogs this weekend off the Wheeling Track. Perfect Condition. No fleas or ticks. Way to Go Wheeling Downs!

Anyway, I had this incredible experience with a beautiful black greyhound, Bohemian Swing. He is such a perfect gentlemen. Of course, it's so much fun to see them in the house for the first time. This guy just kept going over to the turned off television and staring and cocking his head. I swear he was admiring himself! After he settled in for awhile, I turned the TV on. You should have seen him! :) He sat down in front of the tube, and just stared and stared, cocking his head from side to side. He wouldn't let his eyes off the TV! He studied each picture, his beautiful doe eyes blinking and taking it all in.

I have the Greyhound Channel at home. So, I thought, yep, I'm gonna turn on some greyhound racing. Boy, he looked like he was going to stare right into that big screen. He followed the dogs running around the track and I wouldn't you know it, he smiled! Just thought I'd share this. I hope I don't fail fostering. This one really captured my heart.

I woke up this morning and opened all the crates and then the back door. A flood burst past me to fly off the deck. As they rounded the edges of the back yard and lined up at the tree line to each lift their legs, I realized that I had one in every color. There was black (Artie), Blue (Boo), White/Brindle (Gent), Brindle (Jieves) and Fawn (Stony). What a wonderful sight on a drab late winter morning. It occurred to me that it just doesn't get any better than this. I have been blessed and I just wanted to share this with you. My only hope is that someday the rest of you will be graced with such a vision. There is no more fulfilling sight than when the palette is complete.

- Merrie West, written for her hounds Artie & Boo, and her three foster dogs,
Gent, Jieves & Stony on 2/20/2001

I've fostered about 15 dogs since I began volunteering in greyhound adoption, so I realize I haven't seen it all. But this one is so cute I have to share it. My current foster dog, Baguette, gets up on the tempered glass patio table on our deck and dances on it. Well, okay, maybe I'm anthropomorphizing a bit, but she play bows, chases her tail and scratches like she trying to dig a hole, and it sure looks like dancing! Since the deck is right outside our home office, I can hear when she's table dancing as her nails click on the surface of the table. This is definitely a first for me, and one of the most entertaining things I've had a foster do! This morning she was trying to entice one of the other dogs to join her! What a hoot.