Turn the Other Cheek

When I got Girly Girl, my first greyhound and heart dog, I had decided the rule of the house was going to be no hounds on the furniture. Human beds were for humans and dog beds were for dogs. That lasted until the first time GG gave me the puppy dog eyes and asked to sleep on my bed with me. I melted and then caved.

Once the floodgates are opened there is no shutting them. Subsequently Blue would join me on the bed until he was supplanted by Bettina. On that score, poor Blue had no choice. She claimed the bed and refused to let him up. Poor baby, he rarely dares enter the bedroom any more despite my frequent attempts to show him he has seniority.

Bettina’s usual routine is to wait until I get settled into bed and then join me. She hops up on “her” side of the bed and checks everything out. Then she spends some time determining exactly where she will lay herself down. Most often, she sleeps with her back to the edge of the bed. Her four legs are stretched out and her feet are touching my back.

During the course of the night, I am usually awakened a few times by a foot in the armpit or a kick to the stomach. Bettina is as restless a sleeper as her mumma is. Lucky me. By morning, she is usually spooning me with her head on my pillow, snoring and drooling.

The other night, like most nights, Bettina assumed her usual position on the bed and after reading a short while, I turned out the lights and we were soon asleep. At some point during my lovely slumber I became aware of a strange sensation. Bettina had worked her way towards the end of the bed and was dreaming. I had been awakened by four greyhound feet drumming out a racing rhythm on my behind.

The dream race picked up momentum and her feet were furiously pistoning against my poor backside. When you wake up in this situation, you don’t really know what the proper protocol is. Do you do the polite thing and let her finish her race? Do you wake her up and prevent worse gluteal bruising? I was sleep befuddled and at a loss as to how best to proceed. Bettina, in her dream, certainly had no trouble proceeding and the race continued.

Eventually I give up trying to reason anything out in the middle of the night. I waited while she finished up her race. Her sharp clawed paws drumming and clawing and kicking me in the posterior. It’s possible that the racing surface she was using somehow replicated the racing surface of her dream. In any case, she never woke.

The race eventually concluded and mumma finally was able to get back to sleep. I awoke the next morning with a small black greyhound curled contentedly in the crook of my neck. Though I know that one should turn the other cheek, both of mine were all scratched and bruised and I was crabby from loss of sleep. It was thus that I could not resist waking Bettina with a pinch to her bony little greyhound bum.

Retirement is Hard Work!

Greyhounds can only legally race until they are aged 5 years. Then they must be retired and, if they are lucky, they are placed with a rescue group where they find forever homes. Most dogs don’t end up racing that long however. Many things can happen to end a hounds career early including catastrophic injury, refusal to race (anything from running the wrong way on the track to refusing to enter the starting boxes), being a nuisance on the track (menacing other dogs, pushing, bumping etc), and most commonly, a downward slide in performance. Racing is, after all, a business and if the asset does not pay for itself, then it must be written off the books.

As cruel as the business of racing can be, many greyhounds truly love their jobs. My big lummox Blue is one of those boys. He was blessed to be born at a good greyhound farm with an owner who cared about her hounds. He ended up with a trainer who cared about all his dogs at a track that was, relatively speaking, among the best in the country for treatment of its racers. Blue has no bad memories of his racing career.

Retirement wasn’t easy on the old boy. He was retired because his performance began to dip and then slide and eventually bottomed out. I don’t think he was ready.

Blue cannot hear the notes of the “Post” without going into full flashback mode. Every muscle in his body taught and quivering. He, on alert, looking all around for the starter’s boxes, wondering, I’m sure, when his race starts. We first discovered this, of all places, at a baseball game at which they allowed pets. I brought Blue and Girly Girl. Over the loudspeaker came the familiar trumpet notes of the Post (or Charge for those of you who may not know it as the Post, or Tally Ho for the polo set). Blue was frantic to get to the field and take his place in the box. When they played it again a while later, it was ‘sixty seconds to the next race, place your bets, place your bets.’ Diagnosis confirmed.

We had the opportunity to view some live greyhound racing when visiting Blue’s old stomping grounds. It was a reunion of sorts, so there were about 100 other retired greyhounds also watching. Picture this scene, if you will. The race is about to begin, the tired dirty ragged piece of fur that serves as the lure (fondly known as Senor Speedy we find out later during the Kennel Tour) has begun it’s course around the track. The humans cannot yet hear it. But like a wave, from one end of the grandstand begins a ruckus of barking and rooing and howling and dogs dancing and jumping around. At first you wondered why, then you caught sight of the lure and you heard what to the hounds was old news. It was a chain reaction down the crowd of hounds as each one caught the sound of the lure coming, ahead of humans.

Then the sound got to Blue. I have no words to describe his reaction. The noises that came out of him. The gyrations and leaps. He managed to drag me and Girly Girl across the apron from the grand stand to the fence at trackside and nearly managed to clear the fence to get back on the track. Had I not sacrificed my rotator cuff, he would have made it. When I peeled him off the fence, not only were the rest of the humans staring at us, but all the hounds had stopped barking and rooing to stare at us as well. Strangely, there was a wide perimeter around us for the next race. I think Girly Girl was thoroughly embarrassed as she has no good memories of racing and finds these annual pilgrimages to Blue’s track singularly distasteful. She won’t poop for three days before the trip and waits until we get back on track for the parade. You can guess the rest. I’ve learned to bring a large shopping bag to accommodate the clean up. But I digress.

So my poor boy lives in a state of denial. Being forced into early retirement when he had many a good (in his mind) race left in him just didn’t sit well. In his dotage Blue is working harder than he ever worked when he was a professional. Blue is currently running a race just about every day. When its post time and he’s heading into the box his breathing gets heavier. When he’s getting jostled around he grimaces and growls a bit. When he wins, after he is done running, he wags his tail (he always wins). And then he always wakes up from his race with his tail still wagging. Now if I could just figure out a way to bet on those races….