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Hi everyone! Thanks for reading! And all your previous helpful discussions! My partner and I adopted a beautiful 4yr old ex racer Rylee 3weeks ago. He is generally settling super well - is already playing with us, sleeps through the night and most of the day and seems quite relaxed most of the time. At first he was terrified of our apartment stairs and would freeze but now does it with treats fine. The thing that is baffling me is he whines and cries anytime we are out and stop. That can be sit down or just pause for a minute. It can be at the park, in the street, at the shops whatever. I’ve noticed it’s not the context or how busy the place is. If we start walking again he’s happy as Larry. I’ve added a video example where we paused momentarily in the empty park. The thing is it means we can’t sit in a park with him, wait for coffee etc and I’m not sure what the solution is, can anyone help with this? Thanks a lot In advance! IMG_8806.MOV

Hey! I adopted a greyhound last week and I've never had a dog before, much less a greyhound! I feel very nervous about getting things wrong and right. Yesterday he was a charming thing that slept all day and didn't make a peep. Today he got up promptly at 7am to pee in my plant pot and has been restless and frustrated all day. He snapped at me a few times (I don't think it was aggressive though) and whined and even barked at me! No idea why, we'd been out plenty of times, he had water and was fed not that long ago. I also give him a LOT of cuddles and attention. He wakes up very early in the morning. When he whines I try to ignore it but I'm hoping not to have too many more pee accidents first thing. I've started feeding him some raw food and he loves it but he also seems totally ravenous after a few hours. When he barked I gave him a half cup of kibble and that calmed him down, but I know I'm not supposed to let him train me into getting what he wants! That being said, he won't empty his kong when I give it to him so he can't be THAT hungry? I love him to bits and I'm very excited to have a greyhound, but I just feel like I must not be getting it right.

Hello all, After a few months of meets, walks and excitement we finally brought home Peaches on Saturday 15th February! She had a great first day with us, sniffing around the house, going for a walk or two and cuddling up on the sofa in the evening. We let her go at her own pace and didn’t pester her for attention, letting her choose to spend time with us if she wanted too, that night we went to bed and she slept silently until we got her up on the Sunday morning. Sunday was another great day, she ate her food well, had regular toileting, went for 3 walks and we snuggled on the sofa in the evening, again she went to bed quietly and didn’t make a peep until we woke her up on Monday morning. On Monday we woke her up, fed her and took her for a walk as usual, then I had to go into work for an hour or so so I left her with her kong full of peanut butter and kibble to distract her as I left. We have cameras through the house to check up on her and everytime we checked through the day she was snoozing on the sofa and seemed happy! When I got back from work however things changed, she because stuck to my side and became anxious whenever I left the room, even if my partner was still with her (we’ve spent the same amount of time with her). Today I have tried to go out of the room or out of the house for short periods of time to get her used to the idea of me not being there all the time as I go back to work next week. She seems to have a few barks and whimpers but then settles herself on the sofa, however tonight when putting her to bed she began to bark and, although it didn’t even last as long as a minute, she hasn’t done this before and now she seems hyper alert, pricking her ears up to any small sound inside or outside the house. I know we’re only on day 4 but we’re new to owning a dog and we just want her to be happy and comfortable here... I want to say that it’s normal for her to be un-phased by us for the first day or so then start missing us once she grows attachments to us, but I’m unsure how to go about making these secure attachments without her becoming anxious whenever I’m not around... help please! I want Peaches to have a really happy home here as she’s such a shy, quiet and timid little girl who deserves the best! Thank you! I hope we can learn how to settle her! Lauren, Jack and Peaches 🍑

HI All, Our wonderful blue brindle 7-year old Arrow is doing great since we got her last November. She has yet to conquer our staircase, which is a premise to a current issue we've noticed... We sleep upstairs and she sleeps downstairs in her doggie bed. Lately, about once every three days or so, she will start whining early in the morning. We tried to ignore it so as to not encourage it, but we were a bit worried so started going down. When we go down, her stomach is making growling noises as if it's upset. She then wants only to go out and eat grass. Usually after 10 minutes of this she's fine and is soon ready to eat her breakfast. It doesn't seem serious, but it does seem to be persisting. We're wondering if we feed her dinner too early (5:30pm) and she's getting overly hungry? Or could it be separation anxiety inducing the upset stomach? Again, It's not every day, only 2-3 times a week. Usually, especially if she's had a big day at the park or daycare the day before she just sleeps till we come down. Perhaps getting her to conquer the stairs and sleep upstairs would solve this? Any thoughts? Much appreciated!

Hi everybody, We've had our Arrow for about 8 months now and she's so wonderful. Things are going great. Her statue-ing was an issue at first, but it has improved quite dramatically. We have recently started to have a little issue with her whining in the middle of the night. One thing I should mention is that she will not go up the stairs, where our bedroom is. So she sleeps downstairs on her bed and we are upstairs. I've tried to work with her on the stairs, but she seems quite scared of them. When she whines in the middle of the night, I let her out but she mainly just eats a bit of grass and walks around a bit. It doesn't seem to be a bathroom emergency. Sometimes I give her a treat after she gets in and it seems to help get her back to sleep. She's been so great with no big signs of separation anxiety for 8 months, and we really hope this doesn't become a nightly thing. Any thoughts? Should be wait it out and let her whine until she gives up? Do you all think there could be a medical issue? Usually she goes through the night and is fine, but the issue does seem to be growing in frequency. Thank you all as always!

I have had my shy Greyhound for 4 months. Sometimes she whines at the door but wont come in. She will come in if I ask her if she wants to go for a walk, but I dont want to do this late at night. I have tried encouraging her to come in, food in her dish, (she wont come to me for treats), and turning the lights all off at night and going upstairs. Last night, she came in after 45 minutes when I went into the garage, opened the garage door, and stayed there until after she went into her crate. Doorways seem to make her nervous. What can I do?

Hi All! I haven't posted here too much but I wanted to give a brief overview of our experience with SA, because it seems a little different and I wish I had found a post like this back when we first started having issues. We've had our girl, Goose, for about a year. She's about to turn 5, and came to us with a broken leg from the track. I work from home, and having never had a Grey before, I stupidly didn't take the necessary precautions right away when it came to prepping her for being on her own. Part of this was because she didn't seem to care too much about us for the first several weeks. She would intentionally spend time away from us every day (rude, lol). Also, we have a cat, so leaving her alone was slightly complicated by wanting to monitor them together at all times. Her SA manifests basically only as whining/howling. There is some panting and occasional pacing, but that's about it. I felt pretty lucky that we weren't dealing with accidents or destructive behavior. However, the howling was a big problem since we live in an apartment and this became incredibly difficult over time as my fiance and I struggled to go out together. She loved her crate, but it seemed to make zero difference with her SA. We eventually got rid of it because she never wanted to come out, it was huge, and didn't really seem to help her at all. We read everything on SA and tried music, collars, plugins, clicker training, thundershirts, just waiting it out... everything. Our in/out/ignore routines that everyone recommends would work, and then very suddenly she'd be back to square one. It seemed completely random; sometimes she'd ignore us leaving, and other times she'd lose it immediately. We walk her, but were limited in our ability to wear her out completely due to her bad leg (she still can't handle super long walks). We were feeling incredibly lost until a few weeks ago when I came across a reddit comment from someone who had a similar situation (just howling while alone). This person described a routine of coming/going but reinforcing the good (quiet) behavior with pets/rewards, and coming back with a firm "no" if their Grey started to pitch a fit. This seems obvious now, but it goes against absolutely all SA advice I've read in the last year, so it kinda blew my mind. Sure enough, we've done only a small amount of training in this fashion (I'm talking only minutes at a time), and she's responding SO WELL. I just left her for an hour and a half with a recording device, and came home to find that she had only howled for about 10 seconds the entire time (she used to lose it roughly every 5 minutes). I feel like a ginormous weight has been lifted off my shoulders, and I'm so excited that I just had to come here and share it with you guys. I don't want to seem preachy, because I know this doesn't apply to most people. I also don't know what it means for my dog. She's very smart so she seemed to understand right away what this training meant. Maybe this isn't true SA. She's very vocal in general, so maybe she's just been being a brat this whole time. It's hard to say for sure, but I really hope this can help someone else. Cheers

Hi everybody! This is my first post, though I've been lurking the forums anonymously for a while now. This place has been such a great resource already - I love the community here! I'm hoping someone has had a similar experience with their greyhound and might be able to give me a little bit of insight to my hound's weird behavior. We adopted 3.5 year old Dewey in March - he's a huge goofball and pretty outgoing for a greyhound. He showed some pretty normal symptoms of anxiety for the first few months - he was scared of leaving the apartment at first, scared of cars and loud noises, scared to cross the street, and sometimes would freeze up in the middle of a walk and refuse to move. Through gentle but persistent encouragement we've gotten over almost all of these issues - he loves going outside now, doesn't mind cars, loves long walks, etc. Very occasionally now he will freeze on a walk if he is only with one of his two owners (me and my partner) - he prefers to be in a group. However, it doesn't feel like a problem. What has become a problem: over the course of the summer he started whining more and more - in the last month particularly it has ramped up a lot. He whines frequently throughout the day now, and it doesn't seem to be linked to a particular cause - he eats plenty, gets healthy treats and snacks, has fresh water always available to him, and it doesn't seem to be linked to having to pee or poop. We took him to the vet to make sure he's not secretly in pain, but he has a clean bill of health and the vet didn't seem to have a clue why this would be happening. We're hesitant to put him on anxiety meds because it doesn't even seem like he's particularly anxious - just loud! He whines any time either of us leaves the apartment or changes rooms. He whines while sniffing around the house. He whines loudly WHILE he's playing with and squeaking his favorite duck toy. He often doesn't even seem to be in distress - just whines for the sake of whining. We try not to acknowledge the noise because we don't want to reinforce the behavior, but often it gets so loud and irritating that we have to shush him. And the worst part is that it seems to be increasing in both volume and frequency of occurrence. Does anybody have experience with this strange random whining behavior, or barring that, an idea on how to address it? It's getting worse - what was once a mildly annoying quirk is now a majorly off-putting and frustrating behavior, and we have no idea how to fix it. Thanks for your time and help!!

My grey barks and whines at 5:30am (if not earlier) every single day. It is becoming a bit of a problem, as the only way I can get her to stop peeing in the house at night is to take her out at 11pm or later, so I'm not getting enough sleep. She doesn't need to go out at 5:30 - I let her out and 9 times out of 10 she goes out and comes straight back in again. She just wants us all up out of bed so we can take her out for a walk. With winter approaching, it is going to be worse as we need to wait until it is light in the mornings. If she isn't barking at us, she is barking at our other dog to wake up. Anyone got any tips on how to teach her to be patient? Has anyone cracked this? (And yes, I realise we have a diva on our hands).

Hi, First I have to thank so much this forum, so many people had helped me with my fearful Laila and now after 5 months with us she is blossoming and feeling more comfortable. But now she became a crybaby, she learned that crying is a good method to get things. She cries at 6am to pee, to eat. She cries because she wants cuddles. She cries because I am in a different room and she wants me in the same room as her. For everything she whines, in the beginning I found so cute, but now it's just annoying so much crying. Is it normal? How do I avoid that, is ok just ignore? If I ignore the whining gets loud and loud and then starts a sad barking. She is such a crybaby, hahahaha.

We brought home our lovely ex-racer about two weeks ago now. Things have been great, and she seems to be doing really well with the cat (which was my main concern). She's generally very mellow and well-behaved, so we're very grateful for that. I work from home, so I've been able to help her adjust nicely to our apartment. I was cautioned not to let her spend all of her time in the same room with me, and we've done that without much difficulty. We are ready to start alone training with her. Fortunately, she loves her crate, so that helps a lot. However, she seems to have some SA but I'm confused because it's not at all consistent. Some days, she doesn't want to be around us at all and will intentionally leave the room we're in and sleep elsewhere, sometimes for a few hours, sometimes all day. She also doesn't mind if we're the one leaving the room in those cases. At other times, she will cry if I so much as go into the bathroom. At first I thought it was just about the time of day, or maybe how tired/lazy she was feeling. But that doesn't seem to be the case. It feels completely random. Because of this, I'm not quite sure how to proceed with her alone training. How will I know if she's really ready, or if she just happens to be in a good mood? Any advice or thoughts would be greatly appreciated. Other complications for us: - Since we are in an apartment, it would be a big deal for her to cry the whole time we're gone. So we have to be very cautious about that. - She is healing from a broken leg, so we cannot take her on a long walk to wear her out before leaving. - She can't be alone with the cat yet. However, she does love her crate so that's not so bad right now.

We got Baxter about a month ago and he seems to be settling in well except for the fact that he whines and barks almost every night now. At first he'd only whine at night when he had to go (one night he had diarrhea) but the other nights when he whine my mother would take him out and nothing. It's getting to the point where we're losing sleep. Sometimes my mother has to go sleep on the couch. We tried leaving a light on and the tv even but nothing works. We even reprimand him sometimes but that only works for a while. I don't know what to do. He doesn't do stairs so he can't sleep with us and if we let him out he pulls things off shelves or bites the knobs off drawers. Anyone have any tips?

Hello all, Ive had my boy Kota since last march. He is a wonderful grey, he barks and sings and is very social with people, not skittish at all. He has even taken to being a lapdog, and just in the last week he got a girlfriend, a large great dane from next door who he actually plays with! Its been a long time since I posted on this forum, so a bit of background. Im a 24 yr old male living in Atlanta. Last year he and I had some problems with aggression and guarding. He bit me and my girlfriend more than once, until she refused to stay with me because she was scared of him, and honestly I was too. I had a proffessional come over a few times to try and help me out, teach me how to help break him of those habits. He bit her as well, and she actually commended me for sticking with him. i guess most people would have given up and sent him back by then. It took 8 months to a year, and a lot of tough love (I think not giving him affection hurt me more than him,) but he is my best friend now and a wonderful, affectionate, well behaved hound. Now for my problem. Kota had recently taken to tearing things up. Nothing important like shoes or anything, mostly paper from the trash by my desk or something of the like. It started with him doing it every once in a while, but it has grown to the point where nearly every time I come home there is something torn up. Its unrealistic to think that I can keep everything out of his reach, and honestly I dont want to worry about whether there is a scrap of paper in my trashcan or a receipt on the counter every time I leave the house. He has also been urinating in the house recently, and once or twice defacated. He has always had problems peeing. What i mean by that is ever since I got him, when i take him out to pee he will pee for minutes straight. Ive timed it once and he peed for over three minutes. The stream is always weak as well, and sometimes an hour or less later we will go out again for a run or something and he stops and pees for just as long. What makes this more strange is that when he and I used to live alone, (I have a roommate now,) I would be at work for a full day, and he would be fine at home, not mess then house, not tear anything up, nothing, ever, regardless of my workout schedule or sports practice or anything. When he had to go out he would sing or bark and we would go out, and we never had a problem. I took him to the vet recently and they ran an ultrasound on him after he peed, and said it looked like his bladder wasnt emptying fully, but didnt make it seem like a big problem and gave him no treatment, just said keep taking him out. I know that the recent problems are manifested in stress. He has been barking and whining MUCH more often lately. He never barks unless he wants something, but I will be at my desk working and he will come up every couple of minutes and whine. I will take him out to pee and play a bit, five minutes later, same thing. I dont know how to help him or what he wants me to do for him. He is also so so tense. It has gotten to the point where he will be laying on his bed staring at me, and if I do so much as lean forward he will jump up and get right in my face barking. Most times we will go out, but every five minutes has a pretty big impact on my work or just general relaxation. My roommate also works from home, and apparently kota doesnt really do this to him, he will either lay up in my bed until I come home or on his bed without bothering Dan, unless he really has to go out and pee. But when Im home he is a basket case. It kills me because every time he jumps up at me his tail is wagging hard and I know he wants to go outside, and like I said I will take him out and play and let him run every day, but every five minutes is a bit much. Maybe i need to try tiring him out more? Run in the morning? I dont know. So the peeing in the house recently I know is my fault somehow. The only thing I can think is that sometimes when he comes over to me five minutes after I took him out I tell him no, and to go lay down. He goes and lays down, but will be very upset about it, and will cry, and it really upsets me because I love my dog very much. Then like i said if I so much as lean back from the computer, he springs up. So Ive had to tell him no more than a few times, and Im sure that somewhere in there I had told him no when he really had to pee, and I just couldnt differentiate because his body language is always the same. I think I messed up his understanding of what to do when he has to pee and maybe he thinks its a bad thing to do now? The tearing up of paper etc. has been really bad lately. He normally does it after I come home from work, take him out to run and play, then run to the gym for an hour. During that hour or anytime I leave the house is when he would normally tear things up, but today Dan called and said he went from the living room to the kitchen and when he got back he caught kota trying to nab a piece of paper off the coffee table. He hates being alone but unfortunately I cant be with him 24/7. Its stressful enough on me but I feel bad that my roommate, who works from home a lot of the time, is handling it on his own much of the day. I know this was long winded and I hope i gave enough detail. I also hope I dont sound like a terrible Dad because Ive told him no many times when he barks or whines, but like I said this is all a recent development, and my schedule hasnt changed much since we used to live alone. I cant take him out every ten minutes, neither can my roommate, and I cant never leave the house. I dont want to just go back to crating him because that doesnt solve the problem and will probably just make him more stressed. I love kota more than anything. Hes turned into the greatest, smartest, most well behaved and most affectionate dog Ive had in my life, and I hate that he is dealing with something that I dont necessarily know how to fix. If anyone has any advice or has dealt with something similar please help. And I would love some constructive criticism but save your breath if all you have is outright insults. Thanks, Tanner

Our new greyhound has become very clingy. We made the mistake of showering her with attention and letting her sleep in our bed. Now I think it may be turning into SA. She whines a lot when we leave her in the crate, even when we are in a different room. It makes me sad because I want to pet her all the time if she whines. But I know that makes it worse. How should we go about treating her? We have only had her for 4 days. We live in a small apartment also, so it's hard to keep our distance. I have read in a few books that you are supposed to ignore them and show "tough love". Practically what does this look like? Even now I am in my bedroom with the baby gate up, and she is in the family room whining because she can't get to me. It's a bit stressful because starting next week we really need to get her on a schedule where she can be in her crate while we are at work. Any ideas, stories, or suggestions? Thanks!!

Hi fellow members, My girlfriend and I are new adopters of Sam, a 3 year old ex-racer, who we have had for almost 2 months now. Things are overall going very well with Sam. He has an extremely calm temperament (exactly what we wanted), he is getting along well with our cat (after cat de-training), and he is nothing less than an angel when we are around. HOWEVER, when we are not around, he tends to panic. We both work 9-5 jobs so Sam is alone for most of the day. We always leave a kong before leaving and the radio on, he can go a few hours without saying a word, and then he can begin vocalizing for 2-3 hours straight (often times we get home and hear him vocalizing from the hallway). He has been crated since day 1. We were told to give Sam barely any attention when he first arrived and that's exactly what we did. We read a lot about alone training and did everything we read (including some of the great tips in this forum!). We tried leaving him alone uncrated (as this was a suggestion), and taped him while we were gone, he continuously paces and howls and vocalizes more than when he is outside the crate. So we keep him crated as he is overall calmer. Luckily, he does not display any destructive behaviour (no accidents yet). Since we live in a condo, we are beginning to be worried about the disturbances he is making, and after this much time, it does not seem to be improving. We continue to do some alone training, but we are still not seeing improvement... Any insight and expertise you can give us would be extremely appreciated. Thanks in advance

Some background: We've had Mika now for about 6 months, and have had very few problems with him. He was a double-bounce and had been in three foster homes and two homes before we got him. He's smart and his last foster mom was pretty good about laying out the rules. Mostly he's a good boy, but he's got a couple issues. When he is unsupervised, he has to be crated. Really this is for his own protection, since he is SUPER destructive. Most of the time he is fine, but occasionally he finds things and chews them up and very often ingests them. We tell people his middle name is "dietary indiscretion." He's like a lab in a greyhound suit. I don't think this is anxiety related, since he's done it before with us sitting in the same room. It's amazing how quickly he can rip open a toy and eat the stuffing, squeaker, and sometimes the toy itself. We have very limited toy options for him now, sadly. He also rips up pillows, cushions, blankets, dog beds, dog pads, rugs... You get the idea. I think he enjoys it! His crate is downstairs, alongside our other grey's crate. We can't have him upstairs with us because he is not trustworthy with our cats, and quite frankly, they need a refuge from him. He's always been happy in his crate, and sometimes goes in there on his own. He doesn't fuss or cry when we leave, and until now, he's almost always been fine in there at night. The new problem: Occasionally in the past he has whined in his crate when we've gone to bed. It's happened maybe 4 or 5 times in the 6 months we've had him. One time he had diarrhea, and another time was a bad reaction to tramadaol. I usually wait until he's quiet, and then take him outside on a short lead to make sure he doesn't need to pee or poop. No petting, no cookies, just a quick outside, since I don't want to reward him. Sometimes he continues to whine, and we ignore him and it stops. This happened on Wednesday - he cried for awhile, I took him out, he cried for awhile, and then cried and howled for awhile (maybe 15 minutes), and then finally stopped. No problems on Thursday or Friday. Not a peep. Last night (Saturday), the same thing happened again. We went to bed late (as we often do) around 1AM and the whining started at 1:15. I took him out again, and he did nothing outside. I put him in his crate, and the whining escalated to howling. I took him out again, and this time he peed. Back in the crate, then more whining. Then howling. Then full-on barking. We figured he would tire himself out eventually, but he barked almost non-stop for 45 minutes. I came down to check on him, and he was standing in his crate, wide-eyed and panting. We tried turning the light on for him. More barking. Finally, around 3:15, I gave up and came downstairs to sleep on the couch. He could see me from his crate. He stopped barking but would break into whining, so I finally just let him out. He flopped down on a dog bed and went to sleep within 90 seconds. I know I shouldn't reward his barking/crying/whining with attention or by letting him out, but two hours of barking was really more than we could handle. Today I am exhausted and not sure what to do if it happens again. We need sleep! And I'm concerned the neighbors will complain, eventually... I've thought about muzzling him and leaving him out of the crate, but quite frankly, he's pretty destructive with the muzzle. He rubs on things violently. There's a spot on the outside of our house where he's rubbed the paint off trying to get his muzzle off. Inside, he knocks things off shelves, scratches and dents walls and scrapes furniture trying to get it off. Suggestions? Thoughts? Help?

Our Ava started having seizures in July (although she had some in the racing kennel before she retired in November/December 2011 - she's now had four separate seizure incidents which have required hospitalization each time. She just was released this afternoon after having two seizures on Wednesday morning at 4:10am. She had the first seizure at home and when she came to, we headed straight for the hospital (her last seizure episode was 24 days ago and she had 5 within an hour). On the way to the hospital she whined off and on and paced during the whole ride (20-25 minutes), but no seizures. After the tech took her away, the doctor told us she had a violent grand mal during her examination. She's pretty banged up, some brusing and lots of cuts and scratches, so she's sore too. Where we are at right now, they kept her phenobarbital at the same dose (2 tabs twice a day), but added in Keppra at the hospital. (She is now on 250mg every 8 hours). We're also going to start her on Potassium Bromine, but it won't be ready until Saturday afternoon. The first dose of Keppra that I had planned on giving would of been at 11pm, because I wanted to get her on a schedule. I called the hospital to ask when her last dose was and it was 8am, so next dose should of been at 4pm. I went ahead and gave her the Keppra at 645pm. She is acting strange and I'm a little worried. (she was acting strange before I gave the Keppra (which is why I called to ask when she last had it), so I'm wondering if her behavior is because I was 2 hours and 45 minutes late with her next dose or because she just started the medication or ???) She is pacing, a bit of whining and seems to be looking for something. I have let her out three times and she just stands in the yard with her nose in the air, smelling. She is doing the same thing in the house, has her nose up in the air smelling. (((I just now let her out again and she did finally pee!!))) It was very warm in St. Louis today and now the temperature has dropped drastically, it's windy and rainy. I thought maybe she was smelling in the yard (with nose in the air) earlier because a storm was coming. Ava's regular vet is working with the emergency hospital to get Ava's seizures under control and I have her cell number to call her if anything happens - so I do have a call in for her. I guess I'm just wondering if anyone has experienced the same behavior after starting Keppra. I just want to help her and she can't talk. Thanks, Kim & Ava