Recently a Friend Visited and Took a Photo of My Dogs.

From left: Slinky, Wendy, Vic and Akira.

Greyhounds and Whippets Rescued from China now at Elite Greyhounds

Elite Greyhound Adoptions of South Florida (http://www.elitegreyhounds.org/) is now rescuing greyhounds and whippets from China. Both breeds are used at the dog tracks in China and they have no future without rescue and adoption.

A New Friend for Friends of Greyhounds

As you may or may not know, I am a volunteer for Friends of Greyhounds.

Several months ago, Scott found us and began to volunteer to help out in the kennel. Soon he noticed and fell in love with Dusty.

Then, Scott created a blog titled "Dusty and Me" that he describes as "A blog about an old dog and his young greyhound".

Horses & Hounds 2016 Was a Big Success

Horses & Hounds is an annual event sponsored by the Horses & Hounds Charitable Foundation on Sympatico Farm in Lake Worth, Florida.

Both greyhound and non-greyhounds are invited along with their owners.

This year, the activities included a dressage demonstration, a presentation from Medieval Times in Orlando, free hot dogs (yum!), an exotic car display (I love the color of the Corvette!) and a silent auction.

Click to Enlarge.

Charlie

I recently began fostering one of the greyhounds from Friends of Greyhounds.

Charlie is a sweet boy and gets along well with people and other greyhounds. He does have issues with children and small animals. You can read Charlie's profile here.

When Charlie first came into my house he was a "slow starter". It took him 2-3 days to relax and feel at home. He has a favorite bed and loves playing in the backyard. My other three greyhounds run and play with him like he is an old friend.

The biggest problems I have experienced with Charlie are:
1. He will hit you with his head when he wants to be petted and you are ignoring him.
and
2. He will bring his outside toys into the house.

The Magic of Greyhound Adoption

A Cause of Seizures With My Greyhounds

Two of my greyhounds, Cole and Rowdy, suffer from seizures.

From the beginning I have been tracking all seizures, medicines, dosages and blood tests in journals for each dog.

I also have been charting the seizures since I noticed that Cole was having seizures when I took him on I-75. You can read about it here.

Rowdy has had so many seizures this year that I began to notice something unusual in his chart.

First, to describe this chart. The vertical axis represents the number of seizures and the horizontal axis is counting down the number of hours until the next administration of his medicine that he get every 12 hours.

You can see that most of Rowdy's seizures happen either right before or right after the time of his next dose because there may not be enough medicine in his system to control the seizures. The previous dose is running out and the new dose has not been absorbed by his system.

Now for the interesting discovery. You will notice that there is also a "blip" in the graph at the point that is 4 hours until the next dosage.

I realized that this "blip' was one to two hours after I fed Rowdy his daily meal.

Cole also has this "blip" in his chart, but Cole has seizures less frequently than Rowdy so it was not as noticeable.

Now I have to determine if there is something in the food that is triggering seizures or if the act of digesting food changes something in theirs blood chemistry that reduces the amount of medicine available to control seizures.

Friends of Greyhounds' Collar Chain

This is a video from Friends of Greyhounds celebration of the 1,000th dog adopted which took place on October 10, 2010 (10/10/10, 10*10*10=1,000).

By the time Friends of Greyhounds was evicted from the kennels that were being provided by the dog tracks of South Florida, over 1,900 ex-racer greyhounds had been adopted out.

Since then Friends of Greyhounds has had to down-size because of the lack of kennel space, but their rescue and adoption of these wonderful dogs continues.

When a greyhound is adopted, its kennel collar is added to the chain, in chronological order. On special occasions the chains are hung for all to admire.

This chain of 1,000 collars represents the 1,000 dogs that had been adopted out up to October 10, 2010.

Some of the original collars were lost or dogs came in with no collar at all and we use a wooden bone with the dog's name on it. 

Most of the collars hang open but a few are buckled closed.  Those are the dogs who have passed away and are waiting for us at the Rainbow Bridge.

 

Words That My Dogs Know

• out - Let's go out to the yard.
• potty - Time to relieve yourself.
• water - Drink some water.
• yummy - Eat some food.
• cookie - A dog biscuit.
• chewie - A rawhide chew stick.
• bed - It's 3 AM! Return to your bed.
• walk - Would you like to go for a walk?
• car - Would you like to go for a ride in the car? (and this time I'll drive)
• let's go - Opposite of stay.
• this way - Change your direction to the way that I am indicating.
• stay - Don't move.
• come - Come to me.
• hug - Come here and get a hug. (This was Roger's favorite word.)
• run - Run.
• up - Jump up.
• off - Jump down.
• ramp - Walk up or down on the ramp (Roger could not jump).
• move - Get out of my way.
• no - Cease and desist.
• leave it - Cease and desist.
• done - Cease and desist.
• all done - Cease and desist.
• no more - Cease and desist.
• more - Do that again.
• two-fee - Time to brush your teeth.
• brushy - Time to be groomed.
• pill - Let me give you your pill.
• home - Let's go home (turn up the driveway).
• PetCo - Let's go shopping.
• garage door - I convinced some of the kids in the neighborhood that all of the dogs have swallowed garage door remotes and they can open the garage door whenever they want to. (The remote is in my pocket, but don't tell the kids.)

How to Train a Dog

Here are some steps on training a dog.

When the dog does something you like then reward the dog with praise. Just like with people you are telling your dog to keep up the good work. If you add a word while the dog is doing the action then dog will soon learn that the word is a command to do the action.

Try to ignore any bad behavior. Dogs love attention. If bad behavior gets them noticed they will continue with that action, too. Of course it there is the chance that someone or something will be hurt by all means speak up, but use a harsh voice, not a gentle comforting voice. Dogs may not know what the words are but they do learn what the tone of your voice means.

DNA Testing for Dog Breeds is a Waste of Money For Greyhounds

My friends at Friends of Greyhounds recently rescued a dog that was only part greyhound. With a well meaning desire to determine its breeding to help get it adopted, they submitted its DNA to a company that for a fee of $80 will tell you what breed or breeds your dog contains. In addition to this unknown part-greyhound the DNA for an ex-racing greyhound was submitted as a control to verify the accuracy of the DNA analysis. This greyhound is named Yahtzee and his racing name was Cry Yahtzee.

You can see in the Direct Sire Line table that Yahtzee has greyhound ancestry going back for over 30 generations. When Yahtzee's DNA analysis results were received we were surprised. According to Yahtzee's DNA report, he and all of his ancestors are pure bred whippets!

Feel free to make you own conclusion. The title is what I think.

A Friend Took a Really Nice Photo of Cole.

Photo by Valberta Guthrie

Jimbo the Car Surfer

While driving with my dogs to Friends of Greyhounds in Hialeah one recent weekend a question crossed my mind. How many miles have we traveled to visit Friends of Greyhounds?

Here is what I came up with... The trip from my house to Hialeah is about 30 miles or 60 miles for a round trip. Since we go there on both Saturday & Sunday with 52 weeks per year that is about 100 trips times 60 miles per trip or 6,000 miles per year. I first visited Friends of Greyhounds a little over 6 years ago, so 6,000 miles per year times 6 years is 36,000 miles. I then realized that Jimbo always stands in the back of the car. That is when I realized that Jimbo has stood in the back of the car for 36,000 miles!

Cole Has Seizures that are Triggered by an Odor

Last year I took in to foster Cole until he was adopted. He had just started his racing career and was winning races well above the average. However, he start to have seizures which ended his racing.

He began treatment by Dr. Karen Burlone of Welleby Veterinary Center and has been responding very well to the anti-seizure medicine. Cole learned the command "pill" which means to report to the kitchen for his medicine. Cole has been very cooperative with taking and swallowing his medicine.

I have been taking Cole to Friends of Greyhounds every Saturday & Sunday for their open house so that he would have a good chance to be adopted. But, the fact that he was having seizures seemed to frighten any potential adopters. Eventually since Cole had spent so much time with me, I adopted him.

When we travel to Friends of Greyhounds in Hialeah we always take the same route southbound on I-75. During many of the trips there was a stretch of road south of Exit 5 to the Florida's Turnpike Extension to the big-bend where Cole would become very restless & whine. Then one day last July, Cole had a seizure in the car while we were on this section of road. From July through October, Cole had 5 seizures while we were on this two mile length of interstate. I even began to call this 2 miles of interstate "seizure alley"!

I started to look at everything along the road trying to determine what in the environment might be affecting Cole. I was also wondering about why Cole did not have seizures in the afternoon when we were going along the same highway to go home. I even propped a camera on the steering wheel during one trip to review later when I was home.

My first discovery was the shadows that are cast across the road because it is still early in the morning. While reading about Cole's problem, I also read that flashing lights could cause seizures. Could the shadows on the road, which also would cause flashes of sunlight be the cause? I began to try to avoid the shadows mostly by driving in the right-most lane.

However, during a cloudy day, Cole had yet another seizure. There were no shadows. There were no flashing lights. How could this happen? Apparently my theory was wrong and it was back to square one. It was during this time I remembered back to Salina, the fawn-red greyhound in the header at the top of this page. When I took her to Friends of Greyhounds, she would stand up and look around almost every time when we passed Exit 5, the area where Cole has had several seizures.

My next theory then became could Cole's seizures be caused by something in the air? And the first thing to determine was how to keep the smell from getting to Cole. I did not believe that I could teach Cole to hold his breath.

I assumed that if "bad air" was getting into the car and was triggering the seizures, I should try to keep Cole's exposure to a minimum. To do this I started to 1) set the car's air conditioner from recirculate to outside air, 2) set the air conditioner's fan speed to high or maximum and 3) open both of the back windows about 3 inches. I was forcing as much fresh air as possible through the car.

So far, since I started providing Cole with as much fresh air as possible he has had only one seizure and I was entirely my fault for that seizure because I forgot to increase the air conditioner's fan speed.

There are still times along "seizure alley" when Cole will become restless and whiney, but I have noticed that turning up the fan speed from "high" to "maximum" will calm him down.

Also, I have noticed that Cole has no problem on rainy days. I think the rain is cleaning the "bad air".

Dr. Burlone said that she has heard of odors causing seizure, but Cole is the first in her practice.

A volunteer at Friends of Greyhounds has told me that he has noticed that his two dogs, Oliver and Bear also stand up and look around when passing I-75's Exit 5, just like Salina did.

In conclusion, it seems my theory that an odor is triggering Cole's seizures along I-75 is correct.

To Absent Dogs

Last Wednesday (2/13/2013) Dakota passed away from a respiratory problem. X-rays showed that her lungs were clear and there were no obstructions, however she could not catch her breath and her tongue was turning blue.
Tasha was taking three different pain killers for osteocarcinoma of the femur. I had to keep increasing the doses to control her pain. I chose to let Tasha go this afternoon (2/19/2013).

Dakota, 13 years old & Tasha, 12

During this time, Darryl began to limp. The diagnosis was an aggressive osteosarcoma and he had only 1 to 2 months to live. I had to keep increasing the dosage of the pain killers and I was afraid because eventually the affected bone would break. Darryl joined Dakota and Tasha on March 12, 2013.

Darryl, 11 years old

My Dog is Faster than Your Dog!

I was going through some old files and found this certificate from NASA for Darryl.

Darryl

Click to Enlarge

Last Night on Jeopardy...

Category: Anagrams

Answer: "Hey Dog Run"

Question: "What is greyhound?"

ROO!

There were 91 greyhounds at Friends of Greyhounds' Dinner with the Dogs. We ended the evening with a group ROO lead by Roo-Master Darryl.

Cole, Jimbo & Jazzy Running

Here is a video taken at Friends of Greyhounds of Cole, Jimbo & Jazzy running and playing.

Improved Toenail Clippers

I made a modification to my toenail clippers for my greyhounds that improved the quality of the work.

I added a small flashlight to the clippers. It is held in place with 2 nylon wire ties. To get the correct angle for the light I added 4 garden hose washers under the back of the flashlight.

This modification has improved my accuracy to clipping toenails and also reduced the chance of hitting the quick in their nails.