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?
Two people came to inspect our home and chat with us. We have a small house and I think already we were out of the running for Lee. There were two smaller female greyhounds that they were thinking of for us. They emphasized that we needed to sign a contract where we promised no small children would live in our home and no other animals either. All of a sudden, shit got REAL
The Homecoming
I got an email a few days after the home visit, telling me that they had changed their mind and decided that Lee was meant for us after all. Now I suspect that it was because we were seasoned dog owners and had a lot of time and patience for a difficult case!
When they dropped Lee off, he was so scared and so thin, my heart went out to him. He had been through so much in the few months before, a van ride from Florida to Virginia, another ride from Virginia up to New Jersey, and time being fostered at one of the volunteer’s homes, with other dogs, which was…
