I have a cow-orker who has done several of those. If you want some first-hand experience let me know & I'll see if I can put you in touch.

Yes, he is an ex-racer. We also have one who is not only an ex-racer, but an ex-brood mama as well. We've had greyhounds since 1993 and really wouldn't have another breed now, I don't think, though I know we'll probably get too old to have big dogs at some point.

Most of them do have terrific personalities - Idol, who you see in the pic, while loaded with personality for sure, is also a complete spaz though. :lol:

One nice thing about getting a greyhound through one of the ex-racer adoption groups is that they can usually match you up with a dog that will suit you.

Do they require a fenced yard? I have not needed one with the Boston Terriers... they don't move very fast and after obedience are pretty good on recall. Not perfect, but good enough so 10 seconds out of sight is not dangerous.

WE have an invisible fence system - I bought mine from Canada from this guy as it worked out best value for money.

Essentially you trace a wire around the area you want to restrict the dog to - can be any length - mine runs to around 800 ft. The ends of the wire connect to a low voltage transmitter, and then the dog wears a collar with a receiver. If he gets near to the fence he gets an audible bleep. If he starts getting closer still the beep gets faster and if he gets too close he gets a static shock. Training was straightforward - one shock was enough to deter him and now he knows the area without even waiting for the bleeps!

It's a good system because it means we can leave our dog out without fear of him straying or causing a nuisance.

As far as photos go, maybe I should have waited for this one taken by cycling pal Paul at his recent Murder Mystery Dinner Party. Of course I played the sweet innocent gestapo officer while Mrs CF played the maniacal French mayor's daughter (...I think I got that right...):

.

A fenced yard will make your life with a greyhound much easier, mainly because they cannot be unleashed in open areas. Ex-racers have been bred and extensively trained to chase. Ever see one of those horrible accidents on a horse track where a horse breaks its leg and keeps running anyway? That's the instinct you are up against with a greyhound - it's somewhere been extremely difficult and flat-out impossible to train a greyhound to come reliably to a voice recall once they've sighted something they want to go after. And they are very fast, so if they see something they want to chase (rabbit, squirrel, neighbor's cat) they are gone in an eye blink. And they don't care about roads or cars, so to prevent an untimely death leashing is essential.

Invisible fences are also a no-no with greyhounds. If they see something they want to chase badly enough, the shock won't matter. It will matter later on, though, if they decide to come home afterwards - the shock will deter them from coming back into the yard. Invisible fences also don't keep other animals out of your yard, which can also be dangerous.

Personally, while I do know a few people who have used invisible fences successfully (all lab owners, BTW), I wouldn't have one myself for any breed of dog. Besides the issue of not keeping other animals out, I was a pet sitter for 5 years and experienced too many problems with them - power outages, batteries running down or malfunctioning, dogs who could get the collars off, etc. Just a few months ago we were charged by a neighbor's dog who came at us teeth first - the battery in her collar had run down and she was out running amok.

While a determined dog could certainly circumvent a regular fence by digging or jumping, I have never experienced that issue with any of my clients or my own dogs.

How do you adequately exercise a greyhound?

That's the problem with reading the Cellar using the "New posts" feature. I read that question too, and though for a second that this was the joke thread. Then I remembered.

Horses for courses I suppose - or perhaps that should be hounds for pounds, or something simliar. We cannot fence off our land - it is open green belt parkland - so we tried the invisible method and, probably by luck as much as anything, it has worked well with the two dogs we have had since living here.

I take your points though and it is down as much to the area where we live and the types of dog we keep that it works for us. We have had a couple of outages through broken fence wire (can be a temporary pain to locate!) and once when the batteries went (we should have changed them earlier). We now have a ritual of checking the signal once a week (our dog is aware of the presence of the fence and won't test it that often) plus change the batteries religiously at teh beginning of each year.

I'm not up on greyhounds but can imagine the difficulties they would create being determined hunters as a breed.

My friend had a rescue greyhound. She would run the perimeter of their fenced in yard. She wore a trail into the grass, which caused some problems with her traction in the corners on rainy days.

It's not difficult at all, actually. A race only lasts 30 seconds, during which they give their all, and then they are ready for a nice long nap! They are not a high-energy breed, nor do they need the stamina of, say, a field retriever, which might be required to run for hours.

We have a large fenced yard for ours to zorch about in if they wish, and they get a mile-long walk once a day. They sleep like babies afterwards.

If you don't have a fenced yard and you can take them to a fenced-in area once a week (like a ball field or something) so they can run around a bit, that's great, but not expressly necessary.

Not too long ago, bout' a year or so.

And I thought you were dressed up as the late lady Di's son, prince, erm, William, is it?

:D

I did a bit of modeling. i went to modeling school and had a few dates but quit shortly after.

My instructor was crazy! I walked out one day cursing her. About 4 years later she and her friend took two teens to Lake Tahoe for a shoot. The man kidnapped all 4 of them, murdered Mabbs and her friend and raped the girls for weeks. Luckily they found the girls alive.

Turns out she chose to get in HIS vehicle in a parking lot, he had cardboard plates, his trailer was set up for slave sex. It had a hidden room behind a fake wall where he kept the girls.

The woman was NOT all there. I saw this years prior is why I quit her school.

She was also Donna Douglas's instructor. Donna came to her funeral.

It was all so tragic....just tragic.

<a href="http://photobucket.com" target="_blank"><img src="http://i15.photobucket.com/albums/a387/wiccan33/Picture161.jpg" border="0" alt="Image hosting by Photobucket"></a>