Disclaimers and Advice
The Greyhound Retirement Home is nothing more than an expression of our love of Greyhounds and other dogs. We do not claim to be experts in veterinary medicine, canine husbandry or anything at all other than dog lovers.
What this site actually is
This is a private family website and it has never been anything else. It is a record of our own dogs, kept up over more than a decade: four retired racing Greyhounds — Porcia, Flying Kiowa Ray, Lift Off (better known as Kristy) and US Luck of the Draw (better known as Lucky) — along with a succession of foster dogs passing through, and Zoe the Smooth Fox Terrier, who was here first and who has an entire section of her own because she insisted.
We are not a rescue, a charity, a kennel or a business. Nothing here is for sale. No services are offered. No money is asked for, there is nothing to join and nothing to sign up to. If the whole thing reads like a family photo album with opinions attached, that is because that is exactly what it is.
On the racing industry
We have opinions on the Greyhound racing industry and for the most part we keep them to ourselves. This did not stop people writing to tell us that we either supported the industry or had failed to point out its failures and abuses. WE KNOW! Anything submitted to our guestbook on the subject was promptly deleted, on the grounds that a guestbook attached to a page of dog photographs is a poor venue for that argument.
The guestbook is long gone, and there is no longer any way to write to this site at all, which spares everyone a great deal of typing. What is left is the dogs, which is what we wanted the site to be about in the first place.
We do not breed dogs
Please do not ask us when our next litter will arrive. We do not breed dogs. We do not know any Greyhound breeders, so please don't ask us when their next litters will arrive either. We do not have and do not plan to have human children, so please do not ask us when that litter will arrive.
On second thought: should a human litter arrive unexpectedly, we would be interested in knowing whether anyone is interested in adopting.
One piece of grooming advice
Do not put your Greyhound in the dryer after bathing.
We feel this advice stands on its own and requires no elaboration. We will nevertheless offer some, because a Greyhound genuinely does get cold after a bath. There is almost no body fat under that skin and the coat is thin enough to read a newspaper through, so the dog will shiver theatrically and look at you as though you have ruined its life. The answer is a warm room, two towels and a certain amount of grovelling. The answer is not the dryer. There is more on why they are built this way on our Greyhound facts page.
On the health pages
Everything here that touches on health — the pannus page above all — is the lay experience of two people who lived with affected dogs and asked a lot of questions. It is not veterinary advice and must not be used as a substitute for it. If something is wrong with your dog's eyes, or with any other part of your dog, that conversation belongs with your own veterinarian. For general questions about living with a dog, the American Veterinary Medical Association's pet owner resources are a sensible, free place to start, and our links page lists the other references we leaned on.
Final disclaimer
Please do not blame us when you fall victim to the phenomenon commonly known as "chipping". We know that you can't have just one. It begins with a single retired racer asleep on a single dog bed, looking as though the bed is slightly too small. You buy a bigger bed. A second dog appears in it. Nobody can quite account for this.
If you are feeling cramped because your house is full of Greyhounds and there is no place left for the people to sleep, we can only suggest getting a bigger house.