A while back I inquired about doggy healthcare insurance. Here’s why. Introducing Mrs Grouse’s latest and best bad idea. We now have Winnie the retired racing greyhound snoozing on her bed in the den. Winnie joins us all the way from New Zealand (!) where she spent her pro career racing in the Elite NZ league.
Mrs Grouse grew up in the UK where the various sighthound breeds are a lot more common and she always wanted a whippet, which is almost unheard of over here. We were back visiting friends last year and they suggested try a greyhound instead. So she’s been obsessed with that ever since and figured with our kids growing up fast it was now or never.
Winnie jetted in a few weeks ago. We don’t get a ton of information about her racing and career, but apparently she has 32 pro wins, over 60 P/S finishes. Her PB racing speed is listed as 39.325. No idea what that means or if it’s fast for a greyhound, but it sounds fast to me. She was forced into retirement after she became an unrestricted free agent this past summer and nobody picked up her contract, she blames her agent for not marketing her skillset correctly. OK I just made that last part up, but in a bizarre twist, she does have a pension (!) from the league. Just when you think you’ve heard it all…
I don’t know anything about dogs in general and less about greyhounds. I assumed since they were racing dogs they’d be uncontrollable maniacs that would tear your arm off if you put them on a leash. Also you always see them wearing muzzles so I thought they were super aggressive. I thought Mrs Grouse was nuts for this whole endeavor. But then we went to some meet and greets and these dogs are the complete opposite of what I thought. They are actually super mellow, mild-mannered, and laid back. Across the board all the dogs we’ve met are just so refined and calm. Winnie is the nicest dog I’ve ever walked, I’m not sure if they’re trained to do this but she walks at a perfect heel with no leash pressure at all. Most of the day, she sleeps in a diggie cup in Mrs. Grouse’s office, basically she’s a 90 pound cat. I don’t know if they actually train these dogs but she’s just a perfect sweetheart. She knows “kennel” and “bed” and certainly responds to “no”. Unlike a lot of retired greyhounds she knows how to use stairs. This is a big issue a lot of these dogs have never seen stairs before but she has no problem with them.
There are a few quirks. Because of their super short fur they need a coat on all the time when outside. So yeah I’m that guy walking the dog that’s wearing the North Face doggie puffer jacket with a hood. It’s weird and I totally own it. She does not bark at all, doesn’t ever sit, and she gets this really judgmental look on her face when other dogs are behaving badly at the park.
Sighthounds gotta sight and Man oh man can she see. We were walking the other day and suddenly she was staring off in the distance and it took me a while but finally, I saw what she was looking at. She had spotted deer about a half mile up the path. and was watching them intently. These dogs are also master counter surfers, her eyes are above kitchen counter level so nothing escapes her gaze. So far the tally is a quarter-pounder with cheese and three slices of pizza. The funny thing is she made three separate trips to the kitchen to get the pizza.
Probably the funniest quirk was when she goes to bed in her kennel at night. For the first few nights, she would paw furiously at her blanket and then stare at us expectantly. We were trying to figure out what she was doing, was she playing or what? Every time we picked up her blanket she would run into her kennel, lay down, curl up, and stare at us intently. Finally, Mrs. Grouse figured it out and put the blanket over the top of the dog. She pulled her head under the blanket and was sound asleep. The next morning she was still under her blanket. Never seen anything like this, they must use blankets at the kennel in NZL.
So yeah, these dogs are pretty awesome. Not every day you can adopt a retired professional athlete who’s actually house-broken.
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