Last night we lost our beautiful Jules. He was diagnosed one week ago with an osteosarcoma in his front left wrist. We thought we had more time. But last night the leg shattered and the screams echoed through the whole valley.
We were blessed that he could die at home, surrounded by his family and even his other mother, Bimala was there via Facetime from Korea. The love of his life, Guinnie, was by his side the whole time.
Jules had a sweetness and innocence that you would not guess from his 90 pound body, his fierce racing tears around the pen and his big, deep bark. He was a major racer, retiring at 41/2, which is a long career in the greyhound world. But he was a tender boy, a honey boy, and my most favorite thing was to lie with his back pressed into my front. That was my way of earthing. I was not the only one.
Last night, his death brought in a roiling, muscling storm – wild slicing lightening, blasting thunder and winds that tore the rest of the lilacs from their stems. This morning, the wind is there and so is a deep burgundy iris, the first of the season. Jules.
This morning, before I was awake, a hummingbird fluttered outside Pam’s study window, darting here and there and then staring at her intently through the glass. Jules.
Jules – always beloved, always present, always in our hearts. Thank you beautiful boy.
This is Guinevere. Guinnie is an off-the-track greyhound that we adopted from Greyhound Friends in Hopkinton, MA. She is bringing me back her favorite toy for another toss. Look at those eyes.
Most greyhounds do not fetch. They often do not sit because of their big haunch muscles, and many of them have no idea how to climb stairs when they first come into a home. They will either not try at all, or try to do the whole flight at once.
Every May and October Greyhound Friends has a big greyhound reunion. Doting owners arrive with their dogs – often multiples since it is hard to have just one greyhound. It is an amazing sight – a huge field with hundreds of beautiful dogs. To me, it looks like a gathering of gorgeous fairy dogs and their human attendants.
Sometime in the afternoon there is a competition. Longest tail. Softest coat. Baldest butt. Oldest. Youngest. Best look alikes. And the grand finale: best trick. The running joke is, “And it isn’t much.” Greyhounds do not do tricks – or at least none that I have met. The best trick that I have seen in twenty years of greyhounds is a prolonged sit, followed by a high five, first with the right paw and then the left. That got a lot of applause.
We took home a lot of ribbons last fall: Guinnie won baldest butt. Cho won oldest. And Guinnie came in second for best look alike. I thought Cho should have won it with his twin – a winsome Saluki mix, but the judges gave it Guinnie and her twin. But anyone who has a greyhound will tell you that they feel like a winner. No ribbons needed.
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.
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.
