Tommy Lee Jones a.k.a. “Lee”

Adopting a Greyhound

Lynne Thompson
4 min readJul 24, 2022

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I will tell you right up front. Not the easiest thing we have ever done. But it depends on the greyhound. Ours was a wreck — PTSD big time and a horrible racer apparently (which is good because we got him younger — just shy of 3 years old). His official racing pedigree name is Tommy Lee Jones, but we call him just Lee.

Those Eyes

It all started about a year and a half after we lost our beloved Standard poodle Chrissy. We had had her from a puppy and she lived to 12 and a half.We swore we wouldn’t get a dog for a good long time. But that December (2017), I saw a photo of Lee in the local newspaper and his sad eyes just got me. He looked so deeply sad! Greyhounds have killer “eyeliner” which just emphasizes their emotions…And I thought “We have to help that poor baby.”

Yeah, that wasn’t exactly logical, was it? And the crazy thing is, my husband went along with it. He missed Chrissy too. He missed having a dog to take care of. Both our kids were at college so that had increased our feeling of loneliness.

The Test

So I submitted our application to the Greyhound Rescue group offering Lee for adoption. They told me a home visit was necessary. Ulp! We cleaned up as best we good. “Does this living room look dog-friendly?” Who knew?

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Lynne Thompson

I always wrote (first poem at 6 years old). Tech writer by trade. I have a podcast The Storied Human: see my linktree — https://linktr.ee/StoriedHuman