Greyhounds and their delicate digestion!

Visiting the vet the other week with a guinea pig who thought it could fly, found out it couldn’t and ended up with a broken leg (now healed thankfully), I overheard a conversation in the waiting room between the receptionist and the owner of a greyhound pup.  The owner was there because her pup had constant stomach upsets, loose stools and nothing seemed to cure it.  The pup looked wonderfully healthy in every other way and I suspected that the problem was actually just the very delicate digestive system that many greyhounds are prone to.  I couldn’t help but intefere…if someone had only told me sooner when I got my girls, then weeks of nasty runniness could have been avoided.  The secret seems to be lamb.  And not just any old lamb, lamb and rice or lamb and vegetable kibble of good quality is the only thing for it.  I must have tried every complete dog food on the market to calm my girls’ stomachs; ranging from cheap and cheerful to top of the range, but where I was going wrong was in assuming that chicken based food was going to be easier for them to digest.  I then read some advice on a greyhound forum regarding lamb and rice kibble and I haven’t looked back since (and poop scooping is a lot less unpleasant!).  However a word of warning; I was recently drawn in by a special offer in the pet shop and bought lamb and rice kibble of a slightly less superior quality – big mistake!! 2 x 15kg sacks later the girls were still having the runs.  Far and away the best that I have tried is James Wellbeloved; the girls don’t love it the way that they love Bakers for example, but they will eat it if mixed with some tasty meat/an egg/some grated cheese and it keeps them in top condition, so I’m sticking with it.  I have nothing against Bakers, my old collie cross and pointer cross did very well on it indeed, however to greyhounds it is the equivalent of junk food, they love it, wolf it down and ask for more, but it does them no good at all.

As they haven’t had any ‘air time’ lately, here’s a couple of gratuitous pics of my girls:

Jet

Sky: Always happiest when she's running

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How to calm a greyhound…

….If anyone knows the answer to this please let me know! My girls are 5 years old now, they’ve been with me since they were about 16 months old and you would think I would have found a way by now.  I don’t mean that they are in a perpetual state of excitement, bounding around like a kid on e numbers, but at certain times of day they are like a pair of toothy, clawy maniacs.  When they first moved in with me, just the act of me waking up in a morning was enough to send them into a frenzy of joy – bounding around the room, ricocheting off the bed..you get the idea.  Admittedly they have come to learn that the fact I manage to open my eyes every morning is no real cause for excitement (although they do tend to still show signs of this with my step daughter), but walk time or our arrival home is a time fraught with danger for both hounds and humans.

First the ‘return of pack members’:  the girls are gated into the kitchen/dining/conservatory when we are out and have free access to the garden via a very large doggy door.  I began to suspect that gating them back from the front door was a good idea when I found that I had permanent bruises and scratches all over from their greetings, but I knew it was a good idea when I returned home to find that they had managed to dead lock the yale lock from the inside during their raptures and I had to break into my own house.  I”ve tried all the recommended methods – turning my back (ouch), ignoring them until they are calm (that could take days following each return), I even tried a water spray in desperation but that just winds them up all the more.  For months if not years now I have stuck with approaching the dog gate whilst calmly repeating ‘away’ and withdrawing my hand from the latch each time front paws leave the ground.  But still I am greeted by howling, bounding, jumping, whirling hounds each time.  They don’t seem to suffer from separation anxiety, they honestly don’t seem to care less if we are out, they curl up on the sofa together and don’t move once they have made sure that the catfood bowl has been thoroughly licked.  I suspect we could set a motion sensor alarm and it not be triggered until home-time.

Secondly and mot dangerously is ‘walkies’.  Now they haven’t a clue what that word means, I could stand and shout walkies at them all day and they wouldn’t stir but somehow they just know…no matter how much I try to disguise my intentions and act all casual, they know exactly when I am about to approach the leads…then all hell breaks loose; Sky grabs the nearest toy and races round and round the table refusing to come anywhere near the lead holder and Jet just launches at you with jaws air-snapping at an alarming rate.  Ok, so here is the usual scenario:  I pick up the leads as quietly as I can (by now Sky is racing toy in mouth and Jet is launching), I take the leads and sit on the sofa, Sky and Jet take it in turns to ricochet off said sofa, I instruct them to lie down whenever they approach me, which they often do for a nano second, then they are off again, eventually I have both of them laying at my feet, wriggling in excitement, air-snapping and whining, I gently attempt to attach leads, both hounds employ various methods to avoid leads (?), Sky ducks and dives with her head or simply runs off again, Jet air snaps and then gets herself in such a state that she runs off to the water bowl for a drink….eventually both return to lie down and I snap leads on as fast as possible and finally get out of the door after our 20 minute ritual.  Once out of the door, Jet plods along like she is thoroughly bored already and Sky at least has the decency to look pleased to be out.  On returning home, they whine at me for their post walk biccy then retire to their beds where they collapse in exhaustion.  Five minutes later should I decide to walk them again (in theory) the same scene would ensue as if they hadn’t had a walk in a month.

As I type this, Jet is lying on the sofa next to me in true collapsed greyhound fashion, her sweet greying muzzle twitching as she dreams and it is hard to imagine the danger of her flying paws and teeth and she (and Sky) are really almost perfect dogs (slightly biased) but I do find myself wondering when they will slow down and become the uber chilled hounds that I am assured aged greys become….

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Itchy Fingers and Happy Tails

I have one and one of my greyhounds has the other…I think I have developed this as some sort of a gardeners’ syndrome!  The sun is shining but the frost is lying heavily on the ground this morning and I have itchy fingers just waiting to plant!  my first early potatoes are chitting away merrily in the spare room and I am counting down the days until I can safely judge the chance of a last frost to have passed.  My carrot seeds are calling to me and if I just had a pound coin for the trolley, I would go and get some compost for them as they are to be grown in bags this year.  Do these superstores realise how much trade they are losing today by requiring a pound for their trollies?….very frustrating.  DH looked askance at the hallway as he came home last night (and again this morning as he left for work) the bags of compost for the early spuds and the pallets for the compost heap line the walls and propped against the sitting room door are two exceptionally large cloches.  They are all poised and ready to run to the allotment as soon as I have that little key in my hand.  But I have to wait until Sunday.  Despite turning up on Tuesday with cash in hand for the annual rent for the plot, I was told that I have to arrive between 11 and 12 at the community centre on Sunday in order to sign up to the rules and take possession of my allotment key.  Again, how frustrating!  Saturday is forecast to be lovely, whilst Sunday is set to rain all day.  I want to be out there, ripping out last year’s leftovers and getting the ground ready for our own crops.

As for the latest case of ‘happy tail’ in the family – the kitchen and whole back half of the house (where the hounds live) looks like the scene of a gruesome murder!  One of my girls has been so enthusiastic in her greetings that she has battered the end of her tail, causing mini specs of blood to fly whenever she wags it (which she does a lot).  They have both been prone to this problem since I adopted them and I am now quite expert as washing blood off walls and bandaging damaged tails.  No amount of warnings that one day she will have to have it amputated seem to curb her enthusiasm and no amount of space seems to be sufficient to keep her tail tip safe.  I suspect that the cause of her latest happy tail injury is her ‘chatting’ to the guinea pigs.  They have been moved outside as I was developing rather nasty asthma with them indoors and she now delights in standing barking and wagging her tail at them whilst they respond in kind with excited ‘mweep mweeps’.  Her tail lashes against the wall of the conservatory as she does so and has the effect of a cheese grater.  I’ve put up boards to curtail her visits and hope this will work….I daren’t open the door to visitors lest they see the blood and run screaming foul play.  I’ll wash the walls again soon but until the tail is totally healed it seems a little pointless….

a tip regarding bandaging of happy tail: keep the bandaging as light and unobtrusive as possible otherwise the hound will just spend all their time trying to remove it.  Use surgical tape and a couple of make-up removing cotton-wool pads and apply the tape firmly but not pulling it tight – bandage about 3-4 inches up the tail (if you just bandage the tip it comes off too easily).  Then keep it bandaged for at least a week – 2 preferably.

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Pack Doughty – the greyhound unit

I think ‘my girls’ warrant a mention right at the start of this blog.  My girls are otherwise known as Sky and Jet, they are 5 year old rescue greyhounds who have been with me since they were 16 months old.  Left to starve by their racing owners, they were taken in by the Dumfriesshire Greyhound Rescue to whom they owe their lives.  More about the girls later (not to mention my opinions on the racing industry) but for now – a couple of pics…

 

 

 

beautiful… 🙂

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