One of these Saturday morning schoolers is not like the others

A photograph I took on 7.11.15 at the Iowa Greyhound Park of Saturday morning schoolers running in a schooling race. Schooling races are run to help trainers evaluate their dogs before they're permitted to run in their first official race.

Pictured here are #1 Superior Tickle, #2 Billy The Kid, #4 Roc A By Metal, #5 Tuff and Ruff, and #7 Wl Lonesome Girl. Tuff and Ruff won this particular race.

(Shot with the Nikon D600 with the 70-200mm VR zoom; shutter-priority with shutter set to 1/2000 second; aperture f/5.6 at ISO 900; auto white balance; normal JPG.)

The Puppy Bean Roadtrip, part 5

On Sunday morning we began preparing for the long trip back to California with puppy Bean. I think all of the dogs sensed that something was imminent. As they had in the previous mornings we were there they had congregated in the upstairs area next to the kitchen.

Aimee had made a run to the grocery store and was greeted by all the pups:

After we ate the dogs lay in their respective spots in the family room:

Rachel and I had decided to start home before noon, so we tried to occupy ourselves as best we could in the time we had remaining, and tried to postpone the inevitable, painful departure. Aimée played ball with Bean:

Then we went on one final walk down to Medicine Lake.

And then we returned to the house and got ready to go. We thanked Aimée and Stuart for fostering Bean for two months, and finished loading up the van. After that was done Aimée sat in our van for one more (and not the last, I hope) picture with Bean.

We drove away and headed south for Omaha under cloudy and sometimes rainy skies. Bean proved to be the easiest-travelling of all the greyhounds we've adopted over the years. She gnawed on a bone, ate a few treats, played with a toy or two, and then curled up and went to sleep. While Rachel rode in back with her she got this photo of Bean that will forever make me smile:

On Interstate 35 we soon passed the Minnesota-Iowa state line, and then passed the exit that would have taken us back to Bean's farm. I looked to the left several times as we drove by, I'll admit, although the farm was too far to the east to be seen. Then we took a turn to the west at Des Moines and onto Interstate 80 which we would follow to our overnight destination of Omaha.

As we neared Omaha I thought I'd make a detour at Council Bluffs and visit the Bluffs Run greyhound track because I'd never been to a track before. I mumbled some sentences to Rachel about wanting to go there, and she was a good sport in saying she was okay with it. I blundered my way around the casino and track trying to decide where to park. Finally I picked a spot to park and we all got out. As I wasn't sure if the security guard at the track entrance would let us bring Bean inside, I had Rachel led Bean around the front to relieve herself while I went exploring inside the grandstand.

Entering the building I asked the guard if they were racing at the moment, and he tells that they're racing right now. "I think the tenth race just finished," he told me. "You can go see the dogs being led out for the next race." I thanked him and wandered further inside, heading in a direction I though would take me to the track. Looking at the posters and racing paraphenalia as I walked past it seemed so foreign to me. I wanted to go out onto the apron to see how close I could get to the track. I had thought of taking my big camera with me but then thought better of it: I hadn't asked for permission and I wouldn't have been surprised if the track employees were a little leery and defensive of a stranger taking pictures of a race. So I only took my smartphone.

I found my way out onto the apron and decided I would watch a race. As it turned the tenth race had not yet run: in fact, the lead-outs were taking the dogs to the post parade. After the dogs were shown to the patrons they were walked over to the starting box, each dog being placed in their assigned trap. As the mechanical lure (whose name escapes me) started down the homestretch the dogs were released. They thundered past me going into the clubhouse turn, shaking the ground. I just watched and marveled. In a little over 30 seconds the race was over, so I turned around and walked back to the entrance to meet Rach and Bean.

The skies were full of mammatus clouds -- which Rachel found fascinating -- as we got back into the van. But as we drove into Omaha there was word of a tornado warning to our west so we went directly to our motel after making a failed attempt at finding some take-out food before the storm hit. We unloaded our bags and checked in. Afterwards I went back to the front entrance and fetched a few more things out of the van and looked up at the gray clouds being torn to shreds by the increasing winds. There was really nothing else to do but sit in our motel room and wait out the storm. Bean took all of this in stride by lying down on one of beds and falling asleep. She couldn't have made it any easier for us that night, although I did take her out a couple of times overnight (once in pouring rain) to do her business since we didn't know what her routine was.

Eventually the tornado threat ended in Omaha but we saw on the news that other areas to the west and north had some pretty heavy property damage. And the weather wasn't going to improve much for our drive to Colorado the next day.

The Puppy Bean Roadtrip, part 2

So I mentioned in part 1 about this roadtrip that we applied to adopt a racing Greyhound puppy. None of this would have happened if it wasn't for our friend Aimée. When we asked her, she agreed to foster the unnamed puppy (soon to be called "Bean" by our daughter) as long as the pup tolerated cats because Aimée and her husband had two of them. If Bean wouldn't tolerate cats she would be fostered by someone else in her greyhound adoption group, but the puppy would be adopted -- no matter what. I mean...PUPPY!

Fortunately, Bean was okay with cats.

Now we had to plan on when we could pick up puppy Bean. She lived in Iowa, but Aimée would pick her up and take her to her home in Minnesota. Flying Bean out to us was out of the question, so the only alternative was to drive from California to Minnesota and back. I spent a few days trying to figure out where our rest stops would be, and eventually settled on this itinerary:

• Day 1: Los Angeles, CA to Grand Junction, CO
• Day 2: Grand Junction, CO to Omaha, NE
• Day 3: Omaha, NE to Minneapolis, MN
• Day 4: Rest up in Minneapolis
• Day 5: Minneapolis to Omaha
• Day 6: Omaha to Grand Junction
• Day 7: Grand Junction to Los Angeles

This is crazy, but Greyhound people are sort of like that.

I had a hard time believing it's actually happening.

At 6AM our daughter and I left home and began the first leg to Colorado. After thirteen hours of driving through Nevada, Arizona, Utah, and Colorado we arrived at my parents place, ate dinner, and chatted for awhile before going to bed. While talking with them about the roadtrip I still had a feeling that they thought we were a little crazy doing this but understood why and supported us.

Up early the following morning we needed to drive another twelve hours through Colorado and Nebraska to get to Omaha by nightfall. The weather was perfect and driving east on the Interstate 70, 76, and 80 was easy.

All this time I kept thinking and wishing that Sadie was with us.

We got some sleep after eating a late dinner in Omaha. The following morning we got up a little later than the previous two mornings. We were driving four hours into Iowa and stopping at the Greyhound farm where Bean and her eight litter mates were whelped on 16 September, 2013 (a week before Katie died). I grabbed a snapshot of the Iowa landscape scrolling past our car windows:

As we got closer to Bean's farm, I could still scarcely believe this was really happening: we were going to see where she was whelped, and we were going to meet her breeder. We turned off of Interstate 35 and after making a couple more left's-and-right's we made a final right turn and there it was on either side of a gravel road:

Our friend who was fostering Bean had just parked her car in the driveway just minutes before we arrived. She introduced us to the owners, and we were then ambushed by the resident greeter-greyhound, Thunder. Rachel got the worst of it:

Gary's wife, Bev, took a liking to Rachel right away after they invited us inside their home: Rachel noticed all the birds feeding in their backyard and started naming them right away. Bev was so impressed by this, so they started talking birds for minutes. In between all this, Aimée handed them a print of a photo she had taken of their previous greeter-greyhound, Rocky, who had recently died. They were really touched.

Let me just take a moment and thank Aimée for meeting us at Gary's farm because she knew that I very badly wanted to see it -- more so since it's Bean's birthplace. Our friend has been to the farm numerous times to pick up greyhounds who were ready for retirement from Gary, and they have a close working and personal relationship. It's a precious thing, and not the sort of thing that you take for granted, exploit, or take advantage of. And we have to thank Gary and Bev for letting us, as total strangers from California, open their farm to us. It's really not something that we, as greyhound adopters, ever get to see.

Gary told us to go anywhere we'd like on his farm. Gary and his farmhand walked with us when they had a few fleeting moments of free time to spare from their chores. They answered our questions and talked about the various areas of his farm. We stopped to visit the long, rectangular runs where the litters of greyhound puppies get to exercise and play with each other as much as they want. In one run were some of Bean's litter mates (at that time they were almost eight months old):

The particolor greyhound is one of Bean's brothers that looks very much like her. Aimée is hoping to adopt him when his racing career is over.

After meeting some yearlings in a nearby barn we drove down the 200-yard-long turn-out pens with Thunder as our escort and watched all the puppies run and barking before us. I'd never seen anything like that before.

Along the far end of the farm was a turn-out pen with rows of small trees. In this pen were more puppies hiding and playing. They came out to see us as we approached.

They are very curious to see new people, and lots of them were eager to play with us. Gary makes sure that his dogs are well-socialized: he has people stop by to play with his pups.

One of the highlights was spending time at one of the puppy barns. We got to play with a litter of puppies there.

We could have spent so much more time there.

Finally, we went into the pen where there were older pups (but slightly younger than Bean). Aimée was quickly mobbed by one of the pups:

Oh oh...one of the black pups has me in its sights:

I've heard it claimed that racing greyhound puppies don't know how to play with -- or don't get to play with -- toys. Really?

When you can get ahold of one, a puppy goes all limp.

Reluctantly we left the puppies so they could go back and play. Lastly we went inside a barn where the brood mamas were:

And we watched Gary's farmhand prepare the afternoon meal for all the dogs. I was impressed at how clean and immaculate the rooms in all of the buildings were. Gary is proud of how well he maintains his property and how he cares for all of his dogs -- and rightly so.

We bid a reluctant farewell to the farm and headed north under rainy skies to Minnesota for our introduction to our puppy Bean. Pictures of that will be in the next post (which I swear won't take as long to write as this one).

The Puppy Bean Roadtrip, part 1

One evening, a few days after we lost Katie last September to lymphoma, Gayle commented — out of nowhere — that she wanted to adopt a racing Greyhound puppy. My mind spun for a few moments as I tried to recall stories written by others who had raised puppies. While I could not remember specific experiences, I knew the stories ranged from "I would do it again in a heartbeat..." to "I did it once and never again...". Was adopting a puppy really something we were prepared to do? 

Although Sadie was getting on surprisingly well as an only dog after having Katie around for nearly ten years, she really did need a dog of her own. (As an aside, racing Greyhounds are always around other Greyhounds from whelping to the day they retire from the track. While on the farm Greyhound litters are kept together for a year before they're sent off to "finishing" school.) I mentioned our interest in getting a Greyhound puppy to a friend of mine in Minnesota who regularly went to a Greyhound farm in Iowa to pick up newly-retired racing dogs. I could keep my eyes peeled for one, she wrote back. And, she explained, Gary (the farm owner) doesn't have oops litters but occasionally has one with a minor physical issue that causes him to decide not to train the puppy but put it up for adoption instead.

That was as far as puppy-talk went for the next several months.

My friend, during that time, made a few trips to Gary's farm, hauling dogs back to her Greyhound adoption group in Minnesota. During a trip she made at the end of November she photographed a litter of puppies that were just two-and-a-months-old. Here is one of her photos of one of those puppies, sleeping in the late autumn sun:

Photo copyright Aimée Finley

What a face. Who could not fall in love with it?

In February, very shortly after Gayle, Sadie, and I returned from the Solvang Greyhound Fest, Aimée sent me a message: Gary has a five-month-old female white-and-brindle Greyhound puppy who injured herself at the farm and, although she was treated for it, he's not going to train her to race but wants to pet her out. Would we be interested?

Uhhh...was this really happening...and happening this fast? We said "yes," put in our application, had our interview and were approved. Now we just had to plan the roadtrip to get her.