We have a greyhound who we got when youngest DC was 6 (2 years ago). She is phenomenal and we all utterly adore her and I can talk for hours about greyhounds so please feel free to ignore me as I ramble on. A few pointers:
- go to a breed specific rescue if you can. I know various people who have adopted greyhounds from non-breed-specific rescues and have not had such a good experience as we have. They will advise you of a good age for children to be. I would suggest 5ish so they can understand dog boundaries.
- never leave a young child alone with any dog to start with. Ours came straight out of kennels into our home and was fine but she was slightly reticent with the kids to start with. She growled at them a few times in the first year. Never punish growling - otherwise they might go straight to snapping. She made her needs known to our kids and now they get on very well.
- watch a video with your children about reading dog body language (we should have done this first rather than after the growling - hindsight is a wonderful thing). Someone on here recommended one and I can't find it now - sorry!
- greyhounds can suffer from sleep startle - meaning they can snap if disturbed. This is made more complex by the fact that they also sleep with their eyes open. Make sure they are aware you are there before touching them. Hence again, children need to be old enough to understand this.
- they are incredibly lazy and require less exercise than you think. That said, they still like the odd burn-up every whit and while and will do relatively long walks if required.
- they will go on the furniture - they sleep up off the ground when in kennels and therefore still like being up off ground (e.g. on a sofa).
- they can have a fairly strong prey-drive with cats, squirrels, small fluffy dogs etc etc. With ours this has got so much less over the last 2 years.
- they are not always the most affectionate and it can take time for them to become affectionate. Ours is still changing in terms of character after two years.
- ours is incredibly calm and therefore calming. I've just had her registered as a therapy dog as a result.
10. tell the rescue what you are looking for. I told ours we had a noisy, slightly chaotic household with 2 brass instruments played every day (wishful thinking in terms of practice but hey ho). We now have a dog who is bullet-proof with noises - we've walked her at the height of fireworks and she doesn't bat an eyelid.
They are THE best dogs in the world. Do PM me if you want me to ramble on for even longer!!