jetcitywoman

Oh, very nice video! BTW, does anybody have any tips for spotting problems with black gums? Capri's mouth is just as brindle as her coat, so parts of her gumline have black skin. How do you spot red, inflamed gums when they're black?

Generally you don't need to brush the insides of the teeth, just the cheek sides. Lift the dogs lip and go for it. Start slow, though. If the dog has never had his teeth brushed just do a few seconds each day and give him lots of rewards afterwards. I find that it's easier to do Capri when she's laying on her side. She wiggles but doesn't really fight us, so she's pretty easy. I do find that the smell and taste of the paste makes her wiggle more than just using a dry brush. Try it both ways on your dog to see what works best for you.

Cool! I had no idea that the FDA regulated veterinary medications!

Have you guys seen the last few episodes where the dog owners in the initial interview state how they watch Cesar's show religiously but haven't figure out how to apply it to themselves? And when Cesar gets there, of course the solution is.... exercise discipline affection Duh. How hard is that REALLY? Especially the exercise part. There was one lady who whined that she watched all the time but doggy was out of control... she never walked him. I wanted to reach through the tv and slap her.

That's what I do for Capri, too, unless the pills are supposed to be mixed in with food (like some wormers and fortiflora). Even though she's new to us, it never occurred to me that she'd try to bite me, so when DH saw me put my whole hand in her mouth to put the pill waaayyyy back there, he commented how brave I was. *shrug*. I deposit the pill and get my hand out before the gater-jaw goes CLOMP - at which time I loosely wrap a hand around her snout. I've found that she swallows immediately and is MUCH easier to give pills to than our cats. Make the task quick and give ample rewards and they learn to not mind it. The easier it is, the less they struggle and the easier it gets. Oh, we also find that giving the pill immediately before a meal also helps. The meal then becomes the reward. A high-value reward!

Thanks everyone! Capri is better now (it's been about 5 hours), and so am I. After she stopped crying when she scratched, we just tried to give her quiet time to herself but she was still too sore to rest, so we just went about our business. After a hot bath for me, and a nap for her, we're both better. We need a smiley face icon for "Whew!" Yeah, when it hurt to scratch, we debated either putting some benadryl on it or ice pack. I couldn't see exactly where the injection site was, just that she kept scratching that shoulder, so we tried the ice pack. But it's good to know that benadryl would be safe to use also. We'll keep trying different foods suggested here and the meds that the doc gave us. Just intuitively it doesn't "feel" like a food allergy. But we really don't know WHAT it is, so we're trying everything. I'll let you all know what we finally find to fix it.

So we've had capri for about a month and a half and she still has diarhea intermittently. More pudding than liquid but also more pudding than solid. We've given her three doses of Drontil, been migrating her off chicken kibble to a lamb and rice kibble, fed her cooked rice, cooked chicken, pumpkin and yogurt, tried a course of metranizole... nothing so far has made her reliably solid. So we took her to the vet again this morning. The vet found no worms in her stool, but something that might have looked like eggs and she found some bacteria that could upset her tummy. So she gave us several doses of Panacur and Albon. She also gave Capri a tylan injection and this is what I want to rant about. Okay, I'm not really mad at the vet. It's too early to tell - it may ultimately help Capri and the vet really didn't do anything wrong. Capri yipped a little at the needle and screamed as the med went in. Which made me cringe but I understand that some meds burn under your skin. i've had quite a few, myself, so I know how it feels. Still... my poor baby. Even though she's very good when being handled, she was cringing so hard the doc had to pull the needle out and find another place to finish the injection. I guess she's a sensitive dog because there wasn't anywhere better. Just finished the injection in her shoulder. Got her home, and the injection site apparently still itches or burns because she started scratching it and screaming when she scratched. Dave and I tried to stop her from scratching, petted her while holding an ice pack on her shoulder. Poor thing. Panting hard, scratching, crying, can't rest at all for more than a few seconds. It is getting slowly better, an hour later and she's not crying anymore when she scratches. Man, this stuff is nasty. Has anybody here had this experience? Is there a way to soothe a hurting dog that doesn't reward anxious behavior? So, mental note, (and the doc said she'd make a note in Capri's record about this too), minimize injections as much as possible. My mental note, avoid Tylan!!!

Many greyhounds slip into home life like they've lived there all their lives. It's one of the amazing things about the breed. Sounds like you got one of the best on your first try. Enjoy her! And if you're looking for a local greyhound meetup group: www.runninghounds.com. We have a yahoo group that you can join here: http://pets.groups.yahoo.com/group/runninghounds/ Most of the walks I've attended are mostly Greyhound Welfare folks, but we're a non-denominational bunch in general... it's open to any and all greyhound people. Awesome, thanks, I just joined it. I'm sure Capri misses being around other greys, so this is great. BTW, I LOVE your sig. The camera angle or something is just spot on and makes the photo gorgeous!

Just thought I'd post an update. We've had Capri for almost a month now, and she's settling in nicely. We've had a few behavioral landmarks and she melts my heart on a daily basis. I've mentioned before how wonderfully she heels on the leash, and we're reinforcing that by taking her to high-excitement places like Petsmart/Petco and our nearby bike trail where there are always lots of walkers/dogs/bicycles/skaters. Late last week she broke her usual pattern of playing with her toys for 2.3 seconds/day by playing with her stuffed hedgehog off and on ALL DAY. And carrying it around the house. Last weekend I discovered that I'm not allowed to sleep in, no matter what. I had a bad night, so when the alarm went off, hubby said he would let her out to potty while I kept sleeping. When they came back in, here comes Capri to whine at me until I got up. I sat on the floor by the bed thinking I'd pet her a little and then sleep on the floor next to her, but she ran downstairs again. So I got back into bed. A few minutes later, here she is again INSISTING that I get my sorry butt out of bed. Sheesh, okay, yes maam. This morning on our walk we met a neighbor with what looked like a wiemeraner/lab cross. The dog clearly wanted to meet Capri but when we got close he was showing signs of fear. His owner said he had been abused so he was afraid of people and dogs. By then we were close enough they could sniff each other, but her dog leaned away and went around us at a safe distance. I figured, let him sniff Capri and see she's no threat. Capri impressed me by acting like a perfect angel - like one of Cesar Milan's dog's - by calmly standing there and allowing the dog to sniff her bottom. The dog wouldn't sniff my hand or let Capri sniff him, but it was very, very good of Capri to let him approach her as much as he wanted. I think we may be ruined for all other dogs. Because really, surely there's no way we can get another dog this terrific right out of the starting gate, is there?

Just guessing here, but.... I would think the dog is sensing the cat's fear and THAT's what is ramping up the prey drive. I know my cats have always been more comfortable getting used to new situation on the floor on their own four feet. They seem to feel trapped if you hold them in such a situation, even if they love to be held at other times. My grey has been trying to entice our cat to play with her. Its not working. Example: the other day she followed the cat into the dining room, where we happened to be eating dinner. Capri whined at her, started to Roo, made a play bow, tossed her head and slapped the floor with her front paws. I couldn't resist laughing hysterically, but kitty was as far from being amused as is felinely possible. I guess we need to put the kibosh on such invitations, but I'm not sure how without making Capri feel punished. She means well, it's just a HUGE language barrier.

Hey neighbor! Do you happen to know of any Grey play groups in our area? We're going to help out with meet and greet events for our adoption agency. It would be good to get her more time with other greys too. We can tell she misses her doggie companions.

Thanks everybody! She's truly a joy, that's for sure.

Hey, finally I have a couple pictures of my girl. Here's a silly one wolfing down a rawhide bone.

We have a cat and recently adopted a retired racer too. They get along fine for the most part. Pixie the cat hisses when Capri gets too close. Capri mostly ignores her, but occasionally is curious and wants to be friends. Just yesterday when I was petting Capri, Pix came over to be petted too. Capri leaned toward her, Pix hissed and moved away, Capri whined and then roo'ed. As Pix trotted to safety in the other room, Capri did a play bow and bouncily trotted after her. It was very sweet. I keep telling Capri that the kitty doesn't like being roo'ed at. (Mommy on the other hand thinks it's adorable!) (I should add that I'm not too worried about aggression in the house at this point. Capri's shown none toward Pixie, and Pix can run like greased lightening when she wants to. Plus there are lots of teensy hidey holes around the house for her to dive into.)

OMG, can you imagine a dog getting through a three-year racing career with no serious injuries and then breaking a leg two weeks into her new retirement home? Ack. That ran through my mind too. Poor beastie. It reminded me too, that she really is challenged by all this new stuff that's old hat to me.

Ack, we had our first stair incident yesterday and it scared the crap out of me. We live in a 3-story single family home that's fairly common in the Virginia area. Capri learned the stairs very quickly - she almost had to because her bed is upstairs in our bedroom, and we often head down to the basement to watch tv in the evening. She got comfortable enough to tackle them at her own whim, often going to another floor to see where we disappeard to (when we only went into the bathroom - haha!) So yeah, although our stairs are carpeted, I could clearly see that they were not constructed for a grey physique. Very awkward for her. Yesterday we headed down to the first floor for lunch, she ran ahead of me (she seems to prefer taking them fast) so I witnessed this. On the second from the bottom step, her right hind leg slipped off the tread and she landed on her left hind knee. A second later, I got to the bottom all scared to see if she'd really hurt herself, and a sad-looking Capri is looking back at me with one hind leg held up. Awwww! I very gently touched her, ran my hands over her body, and extremely carefully over her knee. It only took her a couple seconds to test the foot and then put her weight on it, so I guess the pain faded and she wasn't really injured. It was so scary not just to see her get hurt, but how to figure out the right thing to do about it. All in the space of about 2 seconds I realized that my heart was in my throat and I didn't want her to sense my fear and associate pain and fear with the stairs. I also knew that if it hurt when I touched her she might bite me. If I walked across the room to get her muzzle, she would have tried to follow. Phew, that's a real challenge! Anyway, happy ending. She's not afraid of the stairs even though mommy can't help herself chanting "go slow go slow go slow". And only an hour later, daddy got home and took her out in the back yard for some major zoomies.

Thanks everybody. This seems like a great forum for support and answers. I'm glad I found it. It's also interesting how she's already relating to me and my husband differently. She approaches him very playfully. Yesterday when he came home from work, he tried the turning-his-back trick to prevent her from jumping on him, so she zoomed around the house instead. She's very sweet and obedient with me, but less playful. I've been doing the Cesar Milan trick of mixing her meals with my hands, and occasionally hand feeding her a little bit. And hand feeding her treats when she does her tricks. And we always make her calm down before she eats. She seems to have a good enough attention span to do that successfully.

Okay, I can't wait to post this anymore. I was going to wait until my husband could post a few pictures I could link to, but I'm all antsy and about to do my own zoomies, so I'll start with text first. Piccies coming soon, I promise! My husband and I both grew up with dogs and cats, so we're big animal lovers. Actually, I grew up in a rural area with a horse/cow pasture as my daily playground, so I learned to like animals more than people! Unfortunately, my childhood experiences with pet ownership were all examples of how NOT to care for a pet. No animals were allowed in the house, cats weren't worth spending money on so they had to eat dog food or hunt, and the dogs were chained up in the back yard. Fortunately, now that I'm old, I know better! Anyway, for the last decade or so we've both only had cats as pets. For the last few years, Dave has been wanting a dog. So now that we're down to one precious kitty, we decided the time was right. However, we're quiet low-energy people so we definitely knew that a puppy would be a mistake. After some thought, we decided we wanted a low-energy dog that doesn't shed a lot, doesn't smell, doesn't drool and definitely doesn't bark like crazy. So that left out most breeds. We also refuse to patronize pet stores or breeders because there are so many thousands of animals being euthanized every year. So a rescue or adoption group was in order. One day Dave suggested the idea of greyhounds. We did our research and found that they sounded *perfect*. Even better, we found a really awesome greyhound adoption group very near us. (Blue Ridge Greyhound Adoption, or BRGA.ORG) So now we're the head-over-heels in love owners of Capri, a 5-year old brindle female. Her racing name was Get Ready Capi (we can't figure out if the name is misspelled in her pedigree or supposed to be that way), and we renamed her Capri to be simple. She seemed to pick up that's her name very quickly. We found that she's been racing for about 3, 4 years in Daytona and won 30 out of 131 races. Her sire is Flying Penske, who more research shows to be a fairly impressive and valuable stud. Capri's been absolutely amazing so far and we've only had her about two weeks. We live in a 3-story house in Virginia. She mastered the stairs in about 3 days. She picked up table manners (lay down patiently while we eat) in one day. She learned to lay down on command and with a hand signal in about 3 days. I can so clearly read her mind that she just wants to please us and understand what we want that I gush about how brilliant she is the moment she masters something. I've heard rumors that Greys are hard to train. Haven't seen that in Capri. She made the "mistake" of letting me see her spontaneously sit down in the yard yesterday, so mommy started to teach her to sit. We're shaping that one, sort of, starting from the down position and she's halfway there. I expect that soon the light bulb will go off in her head and she'll sit from a standing position and I'll fall over with happiness. She walks like a dream on the leash, which has actually made is very easy to bond with her and build our relationship. If any of her former trainers happen to be reading this, THANK YOU! She's also been very good with our kitty. It's been fun to watch them try to figure each other out. They keep making friendship gestures to each other, usually at the wrong time and always in the wrong language. Our kitty has always been a very sociable girl who loves people and even other cats, so I'm pretty sure that one day we'll come home to find them snuggling. I don't think I've ever had a sweeter, more perfect dog!

I am not quite sure I understand this. Are you using a muzzle during leashed walks? If so you probably don't need to. Just be vigilant when meeting other dogs, and for squirrels/cats that may dart in front of you. Leash corrections and a firm (but not loud) "no" or "leave it" should suffice if they get to interested in something. Am I missing something? Oh, no I'm the one missing something. Yes, we were using the muzzle on leashed walks. It's good to hear we don't need it then, only when the dog is loose. Thanks for the clarification!

Hi, I'm a new Grey mommy, we got Capri last Saturday. She's wonderful and my husband and I are very happy with her. This topic is very interesting and I'd like to ask a question. We did get a turnout muzzle with Capri, and we used it for walks for the first few days. We noticed that it was intimidating the neighbors. My husband stopped using it first. I kept it on, until a neighbor commented that "that's the first greyhound I've ever seen with a muzzle". Ack. Well, clearly she doesn't know Greys as much as she thinks. But anyway, I'm worried about it. I haven't seen anybody here address the issues of how people percieve the muzzle. The people we've come across when Capri was wearing hers was that she was a bad dog or dangerous. How have you all handled such fears? I thought of writing an essay explaining it for our HOA newsletter. But of course, the other issue I have is convincing my husband that the muzzle really is needed!