Our local branch of the RSPCA had a fun day yesterday and as the weather was good we thought we would go along.
Both Max and Hendrix (the guinea pig) were rescued from the Woodside Animal Centre at Leicester. Max had been abandoned when he fell off a wall and broke his hind leg so badly it needed pinning from top to bottom. He was in recovery at the centre when I went to choose a new cat. He was so big and beautiful it was love at first sight! He was 18 months old then and is 7 now, very loyal and loving – a beautiful boy!
Full of love…..
And cuddles..
Hendrix was adopted after the death of Woodstock who was a huge guinea pig – he is content to sit in his cage and warble at me every time I open the fridge door – because he knows his carrots are kept in there.
Obviously we could not take either of them to the fun day so we took Hippie. She was delighted to get in the car and walked through the centre gates with her head held high.
But it was not to last – she got quite worried by the enormous amount of dogs walking round the event with their owners and when we tried to take her into the kennels to take a look at the dogs for adoption, she froze and would not go in. just stood at the door panicking.
I thought at first it was the noise of all the dogs barking that scared her but then I realised – it was the memory of her life before – living in a disinfected kennel with other greyhounds and the only fun bit was feeding time or seeing if she could run fast enough. She spent her first two years living in those conditions until she failed to run fast enough and fortunately for her came to live with us.
We didn’t stay long after that – just calmed her down and she lay basking on the grass while we had a drink. Then we went home.
I don’t think it occurs to me these days how difficult Hippie’s settling in period was. It was only seven months ago that this beautiful, big bundle of confusion came to live with us and her greyhound blog started.
I remain grateful to the RSPCA in Leicester but the Retired Greyhound Trust really get my vote also thanks to sites like this one for telling it how it really is.
I don’t regret one minute of it – oh and she won’t be visiting kennels again!!
How sad. Do you know her story? Did you come from a rogue trainer?
Out of mine, only one has been unhappy about going back to kennels and that was The Princess. She doesn’t mind dog shows, commercial boarding kennels etc, but when I took her back to visit her trainer she grumbled at all the dogs on the way down the row. So funny, because I know for sure she wasn’t ill-treated. Her trainer also does the local RGT rehoming and has about five or six of the ‘rejects’ and retirees living in her tiny home. The Princess is the Princess because she always expects the best and she expect people to be her servants, but she did NOT want to go back there to live, she’d got used to not having to work for her living! LOL! And funnily enough, quite likes boarding kennels because she gets to shout at all the other dogs all week.
One of the others was an ex-traveller’s dog so he doesn’t really count (and in fact was very sociable) but the other two would have been happy to go back there to live. The Pirate doesn’t mind going into kennels because he likes the company.
Hippie is in a good place now, anyway. She’ll probably get better at crowds in time, too, if you work with her. Give her a scritchie for me!
Thanks Jay – she sends a sloppy kiss back to you!!
We don’t know much about her history other than she wasn’t good enough to race and was rehomed once before but brought back after 24 hours because the people said they were allergic (?) to her. We adopted her the very next day.
Her tattoos suggest she is Irish but we can’t find out any more.
I have always used boarding kennels for my animals – Max loves the attention but it would appear that Hippie will need more time to adjust. Its fortunate that my partner loves having her but I think we will have to visit a few more just to make her realise she is not going to be abandoned there. There may come a time when we need to kennel her and I would hate her to be unhappy.
Have you tried http://www.greyhound-data.com?
I found my boy Taffy on there from his ear tattoos (he raced as Jazz Night) discovered that he ran 13 races and won 2 of them then was disqualified for fighting! Mind you, you should hear him running alongside his friend Hugo the Rhodesian Ridgeback – he growls all the time so he probably disrupted the race that way!
Anyway he was 18 months between his last race and being rehomed by me from Battersea Dogs Home (I don’t know what happened to him in that time) and he hates it when we head up to the trainers kennels to have William (my latest adoptee aka Spring Jaguar) checked over. He is way more comfortable sharing my bed or the sofa with me 😉
Hello Taffy’s mum and welcome!!!
Thanks for the info – I’ll wake her up in a while and examine her ears again so we can check. I know we looked on a site before but couldn’t find her but it may not have been this one.
Taffy and William sound adorable – but then again aren’t they all???
Hippie, is lovely…
Its very sad when you see them sprawled all over your sofa (or you)looking so trusting and loving at you, to think what they have been through and what kind of life they may have had before.
We have had problems with Nellie, she had been fine then one day while doing a ” Meet & greet ” with the Greyhound trust she started to shake and became very nervous and was very very shy and wary of people ( other than us) for quite some time, happily she’s fine now..but it makes you wonder what could have triggered it as no one on the day had miss-treated her… Bless she’s doing well..x x
Simone
http://retiredgreyhoundwalkaround.blogspot.com/
Hello Simone – It is very difficult for them, Hippie has been with us for around eight months now and, although the beginning was very scary – it takes time for them to understand that they have come home- Hips is so loved that for most of the time we don’t think about the ‘time before’ – my vet told me to treat her like any other rescue puppy but her intelligence levels seem higher than a two year old pup – we take each day as it comes and currently love every minute – I would never have forced her to go into the kennels – I believe we all deserve freedom of choice. She certainly exercised hers on Sunday!! Big fusses to Nellie!!!!! x
Kate