Still miss these two girls a lot -- always will.
Wednesday, October 1, 2014
It's National Black Dog Day
To recognize this day I'll share this photo of Sadie that I took back in 2008. Here she was playing bitey-face with Katie.
Still miss these two girls a lot -- always will.
Still miss these two girls a lot -- always will.
Thursday, September 25, 2014
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:
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:
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| 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.
Wednesday, August 6, 2014
Meanwhile, down at the farm...
(Shot with the Nikon D600 using the 24-70mm f/2.8 lens; shutter-priority with shutter speed set to 1/250 second at f/22 at ISO 800; auto white balance; matrix-metered; normal JPG; processed with Lightroom.)
Tuesday, July 22, 2014
Mitch (2007 - 2014)
Mitch, though he may not have known it, did a lot to heal Lynn's heart after she lost her previous Greyhound, Eric. But then Mitch was taken much too soon, having stayed for only 11 months.
He turned seven on 12 July.
Monday, July 7, 2014
Pain and Remembrance
I don't know if anyone is still reading this blog or not; I haven't added anything to this blog since a couple of weeks after Sadie died on St. Patrick's Day. I am sorry if you've been holding out and waiting for the past three months for something new from me. Her death had stolen most, if not all, of my motivation to write about pictures I have taken of Greyhounds and their owners. Oh, I do have plenty of pictures to share and give you a little background about them...but writing about it had seemed pointless without her (or Katie, for that matter).
We were without Greyhounds (or dogs) in the house for the first time in twenty years. That span lasted for two months, and it was the worst two months ever.
Fortunately I had planned to join two of my friends on an East Coast roadtrip to see a third friend run in the Boston Marathon for the first time. And I was lucky that I had photo shoots to do with a customer in Williamsburg, NY, and at the Greyhounds in Gettysburg event in late April. It was a great distraction for me, but still I caught myself weeping several times (like on the Amtrak train that we took from Boston to New York, or on the Metro in New York) because I missed her so much. My two traveling companions understood, and helped me a great deal.
And shortly after returning from Gettysburg our daughter and I prepared to drive to Minnesota and back to pick up a seven-month-old female Greyhound puppy (who our daughter named "Bean"), fostered for two months by my friend Aimée and her husband.
I promise to write about how Puppy Bean came to join our family in the very near future.
It was early this evening that Puppy Bean was lying on the front lawn, and I was sitting and watching her while holding the end of her leash. And as I watched I was suddenly reminded of a picture I took of Katie eleven days after her leg amputation. So I took our my smartphone and tried to get a picture of Bean as I had done with Katie.
As I tried to frame the picture it then occurred to me that tomorrow (Tuesday, 8 July) will be a year and a week since Katie's operation. It again saddened me terribly that she was no longer here, and those feelings of loss overcame me anew. I remembered what I told her at the end:
"I'm so sorry, Katie, that we could not save you."
As I have told some of my Greyhound friends who let me vent and hug and cry on their shoulders about Katie since her death, I will forever resent the fact that we did not even get the chance to treat her for the lymphoma that eventually took her so swiftly from us. If we just had the chance...
We were without Greyhounds (or dogs) in the house for the first time in twenty years. That span lasted for two months, and it was the worst two months ever.
Fortunately I had planned to join two of my friends on an East Coast roadtrip to see a third friend run in the Boston Marathon for the first time. And I was lucky that I had photo shoots to do with a customer in Williamsburg, NY, and at the Greyhounds in Gettysburg event in late April. It was a great distraction for me, but still I caught myself weeping several times (like on the Amtrak train that we took from Boston to New York, or on the Metro in New York) because I missed her so much. My two traveling companions understood, and helped me a great deal.
And shortly after returning from Gettysburg our daughter and I prepared to drive to Minnesota and back to pick up a seven-month-old female Greyhound puppy (who our daughter named "Bean"), fostered for two months by my friend Aimée and her husband.
I promise to write about how Puppy Bean came to join our family in the very near future.
It was early this evening that Puppy Bean was lying on the front lawn, and I was sitting and watching her while holding the end of her leash. And as I watched I was suddenly reminded of a picture I took of Katie eleven days after her leg amputation. So I took our my smartphone and tried to get a picture of Bean as I had done with Katie.
As I tried to frame the picture it then occurred to me that tomorrow (Tuesday, 8 July) will be a year and a week since Katie's operation. It again saddened me terribly that she was no longer here, and those feelings of loss overcame me anew. I remembered what I told her at the end:
"I'm so sorry, Katie, that we could not save you."
As I have told some of my Greyhound friends who let me vent and hug and cry on their shoulders about Katie since her death, I will forever resent the fact that we did not even get the chance to treat her for the lymphoma that eventually took her so swiftly from us. If we just had the chance...
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