JennySays...: Cool Greyhound Mom

I ordered off Amazon “Adopting the Racing Greyhound,” but I didn’t make it to the end of the book because it told me I was doing everything wrong, so I closed it and threw it in my closet.

I’M A COOL MOM.

You may remember, I started fostering a retired Greyhound dog at the end of August, and, no surprise to anyone who’s ever fostered a dog...I officially adopted her.

YAY!!!

SHE’S ALL MINE!

MY FIRST DOG!!!

Hahahahahahahahaha

(Yes, I think it’s just as ridiculous when you post that with your human babies.)

The thing no one tells you when you first adopt a dog (or, apparently, have a baby haha) is that your phone’s camera roll will turn into nothing but pictures of your dog.

I can’t help it. I just find everything she does hilarious, especially the fact that she sleeps upside down in seemingly uncomfortable yoga-like positions (I think that's yoga) with her teeth showing.

Like so:

sleeping with her eyes open

And while there are a few kinks to work out, she has been a wonderful addition to my life.

The main thing that I didn’t consider when I decided to foster/adopt a dog (also with babies I hear): they get up really F-ing early.

No matter what time we eventually go to my bedroom and properly go to bed...it could be 10 p.m. or 2 a.m., her internal clock wakes her up at 6:45 a.m. to eat and be let out.

Sometimes she even wakes up at 5:45 a.m. and then I tell her half-asleep “go lay down,” which someone else must have trained her to know, because she sighs loudly and goes and lays back down and that generally buys me about 45 minutes more of sleep.

I am working on a solution to this: on my list for Santa is an automatic dog feeder. This way, she can count on a robot to give her food in the morning.

I’M A ~~LAZY~~ COOL MOM.

Hahahaha

Another issue is whining. She whines a lot when I’m not 100 percent looking at her or paying attention to her, at least for the first 20 minutes I arrive home after work.

She whines outside the door if I go pee in the bathroom, she whines when I walk in with 15 water glasses stacked up (when I get a wild hair to clean out my car) and can’t bend down and hug her ASAP.

But I have found another solution for this: THROW MORE TREATS AT HER.

Just kidding. I’m going to pay a trainer to come figure out how to curb the whining.

I envision the trainer will be like the human form of the automatic feeding robot, i.e. do all the work for me.

Haha

Since she’s my first dog, I was paranoid about everything (same with babies, no?)—IS THAT A SPIDER BITE??? WHY IS SHE DRINKING SO MUCH WATER??? WHAT IS WITH ALL THE FARTING???

But thankfully, Greyhounds are the oldest breed in the world (they are mentioned in the Bible for crying out loud...uhhh according to “Adopting the Racing Greyhound” anyway) and as such, they’ve been heavily studied and written about ad naseum.

And since they’ve been purebred for centuries and centuries and haven’t been EFFED with, they are exactly the same as what everyone says.

Once they are “retired,” Greyhounds are smart enough to turn into couch potatoes and sleep for a million hours a day.

WHO NEEDS TO RETRIEVE ANYTHING??? IDIOT BREEDS! BE MORE LIKE CATS!

And that’s exactly what she is: A 68-pound cat.

CATS THAT ARRIVE ALREADY HOUSE-TRAINED!

Here are some other Greyhound universal truths:

-Greyhounds sleep with their eyes open.

-They like big, soft mats because they have no meat on their bones. They won't lay down on a hard floor and will whine if there is no soft mat option.

-They become confused looking at themselves in a mirror, and often growl at their reflections.

-They don’t bark.

-They only like soft, squeaky toys.

(My twin sister, Joy, tried to challenge this theory and bought her a non-edible hard bone. It has not been touched.)

This is the only toy I will play with!!!!!

-They sleep on their backs and in weird stretchy positions (seen above, and confirmed by the hashtag #greyhoundsofinstagram that I constantly look at).

It’s nice having a dog that’s already all figured out. It calms my neurotic mind. When I type into Google “why does my greyhound have diarr...” (lol) there are 1,000 pages addressing it already.

The best part, though, LIKE BABIES!, is seeing the world through the greyhound's eyes.

While you never really know the background of a rescue dog or what it’s done and what it’s seen, you pretty much know that a greyhound hasn’t seen anything its whole life besides a track and the inside of a kennel.

Swimming was a huge, new experience, and she cautiously put her paws into the little lake at the dog park and immediately ran away.

Greyhounds have never swam before. Why would they need to?

Stairs were also a challenge, since Greyhounds have never had to use stairs (we’re still working on the “down” part)

But she also has her unique qualities.

She scales the perimeter of my bed rubbing her face along the side of it every morning, which is odd, but I guess she’s never had anything like that to rub her face on before.

...Or else she’s marking me.

She loves to hate cats and thoughtfully chases squirrels while on a leash and runs in circles in the backyard.

She has no hair on her butt from sitting in a kennel for 23 hours a day her whole life.

BUT SHE’S STILL MY NEW BEST FRIEND!

And she’s positively impacted my life.

I’ve stopped taking afternoon naps because of her (dog walks and trips to the dog park take precedence), which in turn makes me go to bed earlier because when you stop taking afternoon naps, you go to sleep at appropriate times at night.

She’s made me more responsible about money because she eats 3 cups of food a day plus TREATS THROWN AT HER after work and all those soft, squeaky toys aren't cheap.

But most importantly, I think about her all day long, and can’t wait to come home and drop to the floor and hug her and tell her that she’s a needle nose but that’s OK because she’s the most beautiful greyhound in the whole world.