ambpersand

Hello everyone! My name is Amber and I've been lurking around on this board for the last two years, getting a feel for what to expect once we made the jump to adopt our own greyhound. Well, that day came a few weeks back and I made an account so I could learn even more from everyone here. Two weeks ago my husband and I adopted our greyhound from a local grey rescue in Indiana, a sweet six year old girl named Pearl. She came from a track in Florida and had a fairly short racing career (about 22 races from what I've found)- she broke her leg during her last race in 2013 and it never healed correctly, so she's got a slight limp. Which is fine with me, because I blew out my knee a few years ago and I'm limping right along with her! So far, she has been an absolute dream! She's a great listener, has already started to tell us when she needs to go outside, and has managed to master our full staircase in one week. She's also quite the expressive one- she pouts when she doesn't want to wear her muzzle or if there's no room for her on the couch, chatters her teeth whenever she's excited, happy, or scared, and does a lot of air-snapping and nitting when she gets excited to see us after work. So far she's exceeded our wildest expectations and we couldn't be happier to call her our own. We can't wait to see how she blossoms even more over the next few months/year.

This is fantastic advice- thank you! I agree withe everyone above that it's probably best to wait a little while before more detailed obedience training, but I feel like teaching her this one command could be very helpful in the meantime. We've noticed that she's a bit on the nosy side (surprise surprise!) and it does seem that she just wants to see what we're doing out in the garage. She does very well on direction already (we only have to lightly tap or nudge her on the shoulder and she'll walk forward- very helpful when trying to get her to go out into the yard to go to the bathroom) so I'm very interested to see how she'll respond to this once we start trying it out. Thanks again!

We just adopted our grey last week and she's a very picky eater- she refused to eat in the AM when she came home with us and would often leave a half a bowl of food untouched in the evening, so we've been experimenting a lot. She likes peanut butter Kongs as well, and I found that she'll be more than happy to eat her kibble with some warm water and a small spoonful of peanut butter mixed in. Now she's more than happy to eat in the mornings as well. We use an all natural peanut butter powder (instead of full PB from a jar) so it really soaks in and she can't pick out the pieces, but it may be worth a shot if it isn't something medical that's causing her issues?

Good to know! Thanks for sharing the experience greysmom and PrairieProf- I might continue to look around and maybe do a few consultations before making any sort of decision. Pearl does fairly well listening on her own, but we're mostly looking for a place where she can get in some socialization (she loves other big dogs and we currently don't have any) and teach her some basic commands. She's got some arthritis and a problem with her back leg from a previous break that never healed correctly, so she won't be doing any complicated tricks or agility courses anytime soon! Lucky for us she doesn't have destructive tendencies or serious behavior issues, she mostly just wants to follow us around. Our two main concerns are when she tries to follow us out to the garage (learning a "stay" or "stop" command would come in handy for those times when the garage door is open and we don't want to risk her slipping past) or teaching her to look away/not get interested when our cats get a little crazy and tear through the house.

Thank you for the advice. As for being "too intense," there is a very popular training facility in town that primarily does 10-14 day intensive training sessions (which the reviews all seem to point towards being good for dogs with behavioral issues) and promotes the use of shock collars, which we're definitely not interested in given the fact that our grey seems to be fairly well behaved on her own and we only want her to gain a few extra skills. We live in the northeastern Indiana area (Fort Wayne) if you have any recommendations.

Hi all! I'm new around here, but I've recently adopted my first greyhound about a week ago with my husband from one of our local rescues. We're already 100% attached and feel that she's a great fit for our home, but we're interested in taking her to get some extra obedience training. She's six years old and already knows one or two commands, has no problems walking on a leash, responds very well to positive reinforcement, and is generally a good listener (except for when she's very tired and doesn't want to get off the couch). We'd like to take her someplace local for some casual/light training so she can learn a few more commands and give us some piece of mind that she'll listen better if we need to tell her to stop, leave it, ignore something, etc. Have any of you had any experience with Petsmart or Petco training programs? I ask because we have several store locations that are very close, both advertise positive reinforcement only training, seem to work with our schedules, and aren't too pricey. Most of the private training facilities in our area seem more intense than what we need.