Tag Archives: dogs

Mar14

cho

Posted on by

This is Cho, our Spanish Galgo.  The Galgo is a sight hound from the Andalucian region of Spain, used by the gypsies for hunting.   What I just learned from Wikipedia is that the name comes from the Gauls, a tribe of Celts who inhabited the Iberian peninsula  from 400-600 BC.  I am told that they have some Saluki in their background as well.

They look like greyhounds, but really that is just a ruse.  They are  a different kind of dog entirely.  We have had eight greyhounds over the years, and two Galgos.  The Galgo is built for distance running, which we found out when we first brought our  ten-year old Galga, Gordita, to Lucy Vincent Beach on Martha’s Vineyard.  We thought the cliffs would keep her on the beach, and watched in alarm as she scaled the cliffs as if they were flat.

Actually, it was Maria Wulf who inspired this post with her blog about watching her dog Frieda run free, and how she became this wild being.  (Read it, it’s a wonderful piece.)  As I read it I thought, “Ah, yes, I know that.”

Cho is a fence climber.  I took this picture because this is how Cho looks just before he goes over the fence.  He scrambles over it and is off.  Once over, he is truly gone.  Cho is now  17-years old, but to see him run is a miracle.  He is a blond ribbon of speed flying across our meadows, across the street, and up into the farm across the way.  He does not hear us, he does not see us.  He is hunting.  Unfortunately, he is sometimes hunting Mamacita, with whom he is obsessed, and at other times a skunk that lives under the barn. Mamacita has marked up his nose several times, which he does not find discouraging. And the skunk – well never mind.

One night last spring, Cho went over and out.  He tore across the road and into the farm.  We called and called.  We could hear him, feel that he was very close, but it was as if he had become the ghost dog, the mad dog.  Finally, after about an hour, he came in and threw up a clump of grass the size of a large raccoon.

We got Cho when he was 9-years old.  He had been returned to Greyhound Friends by someone who had adopted him and then not been able to manage him.  He is indeed a piece of work.  We think that this is because he spent the first 8 years of his life as a street dog, or a gypsy dog, which is pretty much the same thing.

This morning at 6 am he went over and stood in the middle of the field barking loudly at something very specific and very invisible, even to my binoculars.  Then he came in and jumped on the bed for a snooze. So there you have it:  the wild and the tame in no particular order.

 

SHARE & EMAIL
Mar12

the jack

Posted on by

Photo:  Pam White

This is Liam, the Jack Russell.  I have a complicated relationship with him.  This morning when I was letting the dogs out, Liam, who sleeps with us, charged the front door where our feral cat, Mamacita, was patiently waiting to be fed.  I heard his teeth hit the glass.  Hackles up, growling. This is the part I don’t like.  I don’t like the constant barking, the grabbing at our gentle greyhound Jules’s mouth when they go out.

We have tried the Cesar Milan “sshhht” sound, clicker training, the water squirter.  Nothing works.  He will sit but the moment our attention leaves, he is back into his jack mania.

For years Pam wanted a Jack Russell.  Our vet at the time said she would not treat him if we got one.  One day we were traveling on the ferry back to Martha’s Vineyard with our three greyhounds.  Up on deck we met a man whose Jack Russell had just died after seventeen years.  “You must be devastated,” we commiserated.  “Oh, it’s ok, he said, “it was actually a relief.”  He told us how every day for seventeen years, the dog had barked and jumped and attacked everything in sight.  I was sure this would put the Jack Russell issue to bed at last.

Then one day we went to a barn to visit my horse Goliath who now belonged to a friend.  In one of the stalls were four tiny Jack Russell puppies, just brought back from Ireland by the stable manager.  Our daughters raced in and five minutes later, Chandrika, the youngest, came out cradling a puppy.  “This is my baby sister who died,” she said.  Adopted from Nepal, she in fact did have a baby sister who had died.  At that moment, my heart sank and Pam, I am sure, did a mental fist pump.  Of course we bought the puppy, and named him Liam.

As I said, my feelings are complicated.  There is also  tame, sweet Liam who dives under the covers to snuggle behind my knees at night. There is creative muse Liam who sits on the floor at my feet when I write.  There is the Liam who has an interesting, obsessive relationship with our cat Tallulah.

It is not really that complicated.  I don’t love (some of) what he does.  Do I love him?  You betcha.

Jan2

meet the greys

Posted on by

Part of the current pack:  Jules & Guinevere

Dae & Liam

Bimala with a pack from the past:  Luna, Tashi, Liam (under and still here), Esme, Dae

I don’t usually write about the dogs. I am not sure why.  They feel more intimate somehow than the horses, even though they are not.

For the past twenty years, we have adopted “retired” racing greyhounds.  Retired is a euphemism for “done.”  Some are injured, like Tashi, who broke his leg, and was never treated.  Some never made it as racers, like our bright Esme, who just wouldn’t race, despite a brilliant lineage.  It was not her thing, though you wouldn’t know it to see her on the beach.  Others, like Luna, Dae, Jules and Guinnie, have long careers and do actually retire.  The retirement is a tricky thing.  It is about the luck of the draw.  Some dogs get on the rescue vans, and find their way to shelters or greyhound halfway homes where they await adoption.  Others are not so lucky.  Our particular rescuing angel is Louise Coleman, the founder of Greyhound Friends in Hopkinton, MA.

Our greyhound saga began like this.  We were on a cross-country ski weekend in New Hampshire at an inn owned by a British couple.  At tea time on the first day, the guests watched in fascination as the owners’ very tall and very elegant greyhound, Finbar, walked into the room.  He proceeded over to the table where the cookies and crackers were arranged, and reached his long thin nose forward to select a single cracker, not touching anything else, and carried it back out of the room where he presumably enjoyed it.

Pam and I were done.  We found out where Finbar had come from and made a call the next week.  Two weeks later, we brought home our first greys, Misha and Zoe.  That was twenty years ago, and in that time we have had ten greys, including Gordita and Cho, two Galgos Espanols from Andalucia, where they are used as hunting dogs by the gypsies and cruelly discarded or killed after they have lost their edge.

I love greyhounds in part because they are athletes – racers, like horses.  To see a greyhound run at full tilt is a miracle of nature.  I have never been to a racetrack.  But I have seen them open up on Lucy Vincent Beach on Martha’s Vineyard, or in our back meadow.  Racing greyhounds run in powerful muscular surges.  Galgos are more like watching skimming, airborne water – they are fence climbers, shape shifters.  Greys are beautiful, even formidable.  They are often shy and delicate, with an almost feline quality about them, and, I like to think, a bit of unicorn mixed in.  Mostly I love them because of their sweetness, and because they seem to understand and appreciate the gift of home and family that they have been given after a far less auspicious start in the kennels of the racetrack.

Capturing video of a dog that goes from 0 to 40 can be tricky.  Have a look.

Dec13

Jon’s Rose

Posted on by

Photo:  Pam White

My friend Jon Katz lost his beautiful dog Rose yesterday.  Rose was Jon’s muse.  Rose was a muse for many of us – a treasure that he shared through his writing.  When I read his book Rose in a Storm, I felt I had found a doorway to something primal and precious.  It is a breathtaking, open-hearted book.  I loved the way Jon showed us Rose’s mind – her encyclopedic mapping of the farm and her ability to tell if anything was amiss in the map.

Rose was also mysterious.  She was a dog unto herself, if I understand her at all.  Her first business was The Work, which in this case was the running of the farm.  She and Jon share a devotion:  hers to the caretaking of her family and home, his to the deep and solitary practice of his lovely writing.

Thank you Jon.  Thank you Rose.