Rehoming ex racing greyhound

[AddictedtoCrunchies]

We are going for our first appt at the greyhound rehoming centre this weekend. Has anyone rehomed an ex racer and got any tips?

We are only at the very beginning of our journey so are a way off bringing one home. Im trying to gather as much knowledge as possible.

I work from home, have an enclosed garden with a 6ft fence and an almost 13 yr old son. I know they can be very chilled dogs and love attention. I also know they need to be walked on the lead and kept away from small furry things.

Appreciate any thoughts and advice.

We adopted a greyhound a few weeks ago and he has been brilliant. Such a gorgeous dog with a lovely temperament. He does have some sensitivity issues on walk with freezing up as he has no experience of roads , cars , busy places . We are taking it slowly though .
They LOVE to sleep and mine loves just an old duvet folded in half . For such elegant dogs the sleeping positions he gets into are hilarious.

Best tip from me though is join the retired greyhound group on FB . Full of advice and guidance . I've learnt so much.

Enjoy your new dog . They are wonderful loving pets and you are looking after them in their retirement .

Thank you. Did you have to house train yours? Does s/he sleep on the duvet? Have you taken him/her in the car and if so how? Does s/he have any separation anxiety? (Sorry for the questions.)

Greyhounds are amazing, and when you get a pointy dog you meet so many great pointy owners. I have lurchers, and my greyhound saluki cross is a great fan of the inelegant sleeping method - they like to stretch out, so a folded up duvet is a very practical bed, though mine prefer the sofa or a people bed.
You can hire enclosed fields for off lead running, and in normal times people organise sighthound playgroups so they can run round madly together

Our boy came house trained . We let him in the garden immediately we came home and he has used it ever since and on walks .
We let him decide his 'safe space' which was our study . On first few days he had quiet time in there away from the hustle and bustle of the house . 4 weeks on and he sleeps there overnight and sits with me in the day . He found the TV scary at first so built up to sitting with us at night .
Also make sure to get either a martingale or wide collar . We use a cosy harness too for walks . Not all harnesses are suitable for greys due to their deep chest though .

We have some issues with him getting in the boot of the car . He just stands there and has no clue what to do ! We are working on this with rewards .

We had to house train ours. Only took him a week though. He slept in our room on his own bed. He was fine in our car boot, just slept for any journeys. He didn't have any separation anxiety, again, just slept the whole time 😅. We also have guinea pigs and he wasn't fussed with them, or cats or anything actually. Although I do think he was in the minority.
Took him a good few months to master going upstairs bless him.

We're getting our greyhound at the end of October, we met her a few weeks ago and it's such a long wait. I love hearing about other people's experiences of them. Good luck with your appointment and I hope you find a match soon. We were recommended to read a book 'Retired Greyhounds for Dummies' (or something like that) and its really useful, I think I'll be dipping in to it frequently in the coming months.

Thanks for all the useful info. We have a bungalow so no steps to master here. House is quiet during the day as just me here working so hopefully it'll settle down without too much upset.
My son is beside himself with excitement but im trying to be more practical!

We got ours 2 months ago. She's a completely different dog now.
They need time, love and patience. And treats!
Ours never raced as she was too timid. She took a few weeks to come out of her shell.
She still gets spooked at times, she doesn't like people on the path ahead of her, or loose dogs coming up to her.
We had to carry her out of the house for walks to begin with but that didn't last long.
She's had 3 accidents in that time, the last one was in really bad storms and she was scared to go out.
She walks well on a lead, we got a retractable one to give her a bit of freedom. We're slowly introducing off lead walking if there are no other dogs about and only in fields without livestock.
They will give you a muzzle which you need to use until you work out whether they're going to chase small furry animals
Feel free to PM

Just to let folk know there are safe enclosed fields you can hire by the hour for a safe off lead run, I use one for foster dogs that are nervous or reactive.
dogwalkingfields.com/

As a veteran greyhound owner of all of 4 months, apart from all the practical stuff, the key thing is not to get stressed out about things. As they settle in over a week, a month, three months, they adapt and their reactions and habits change.

One of the big issues that gets (some) greyhound owners very excitable is feeding. So some are great evangelists for raw and/or high protein, top quality kibble. Others go for the maximum 20% protein industry standard kibbles plus half a tin of dogfood. Plus a bit of sunflower oil, sardines once or twice a week, yoghurt, a handful of oats (though some of the purists object to that). It's like parenting, though - most of us pick and choose from the contradictory advice on offer and take a view about what seems right to us and what works for our children/hounds.

A book we found to be really helpful was Mary Fox's "Understanding Greyhounds".

[quote SBTLove]Just to let folk know there are safe enclosed fields you can hire by the hour for a safe off lead run, I use one for foster dogs that are nervous or reactive.
dogwalkingfields.com/[/quote]
We've used one a lot since we got her

Love these threads and always like to add my top tip...bin lock.

And various coats, housecoats, pyjamas and snoods.

It can be trial and error finding a suitable feed - they can have sensitive stomachs and the resulting gas can stop a charging rhino!!

I use Dr John's Silver for mine - extremely cost effective and no stomach upsets. She also gets a small amount of good quality meat to make it more palatable as otherwise it's just dry biscuit which is rather unexciting.

Some are cat proof and small furry proof. Some (like mine) have an extremely strong prey instinct and can never be trusted off lead.

Also agree they are dedicated bin-raiders.

Absolutely fabulous dogs though - wonderful temperaments and all-round easy dogs.

Make sure you install your new greyhound correctly. The correct position is upside down on the sofa.

@DominaShantotto that's the default position for my grey ! For all there elegance they sleep on the most ridiculous poses .

We've had our boy for just under a year and we are besotted with him, he is such a sweetheart! My advice would be

• they can sleep with their eyes open and don't like being suddenly woken up, so best to make sure they are awake before touching
• our local rehoming centre were happy to give advice after we had him - found this really useful on occasion

- we were told not to use an extendable lead as they can go from 0 to 30 in a few strides, and some people have been hurt (apparently) with shoulder injuries as a result. I have seen them used fine by others when out on walks though.

• ours is obsessed with cheese :) This was the answer to the "won't jump into the car" issue we had for first 6 months
• they tend be a quiet breed - don't bark very much (usually)
• ours lives with a cat. Cat is the boss!
• you will get people asking "was he a racer?" ALOT

They are awesome dogs, some have had a really rough time in the racing industry (not all), and they can need a good while to get used to being a pet and relaxing into their retirement.

Hope you enjoy your new doggo!

I hate extendable leads for all dogs but agree particularly for greys @Pedestriancrossing - my mum was pulled off her feet when her rescue took off.

All the rescue greys we've had need a 'safe space' - my mum uses her small back porch and just lines that with old duvets. Her first really didn't like men so needed somewhere to go when they had male visitors, it also really helped when the grandkids were there, we could just teach them not to go into the porch.

I've also never known an ex-racer to play with toys - that's not to say it's not possible, but don't go overboard and buy loads until you find out if yours likes them or not.

This is BRILLIANT thanks so much. Am taking notes!

Oh yes, ours had a crate at first but soon got used to us. Another top tip, the Aldi XL dog beds are great. You may or may not get a destroyer, but they aren't very expensive. We buy one a year on average. Newest one came today and he was ever so chuffed. We have one in the living room and one at the end of our bed as he does get lonely at night but we don't want him in with us.

We find the extendable lead invaluable but ours doesn't bolt. We're doing recall training at the moment and finding we can let her off where there are no other dogs.
She gets 8m to sniff around but we obviously keep it short near roads

We have an ex-racer. He's an idiot.

Somm that sums up my dfs latest pair of greyhounds, they've had rescue greyhounds for over 25 years now, they've all been great dogs and great with the cats they've had as well

@somm

We have an ex-racer. He's an idiot.

Lol

An delighted for you OP, they are absolutely wonderful dogs ... please share a photo when you bring your pointy dog home :)

I will do. Thanks so much for all the advice.

What are the names of your dogs? Did you keep a variant of their racing name or call them something different?