Porcia’s Greyhound Retirement Home Retired racers, one small terrier, and everything we learned from them
A speckled Greyhound with her long pink tongue hanging out to its full length
A speckled Greyhound with her long pink tongue hanging out to its full length

Lift Off, A.K.A. Kristy the Kamikaze Kissing Machine

The Greyhound Retirement Home presents its resident menace, on the understanding that she wrote most of this herself and we have corrected only the spelling.

Vital Statistics

  • Born: January 19, 2002
  • Age at retirement: 2
  • Races won: 0
  • Height: 28 inches
  • Length: 44 inches (with tongue extended to typical position)
  • Weight: 74 pounds
  • Color: White and brindle
  • Nicknames: Kamikaze Kissing Machine, Knucklehead, Whack-Job, Whirling Dervish, Princess Whacka-Whacka
  • Favorite treat: The flavor of human skin
  • Favorite toy: Dirty socks pilfered from the laundry hamper
  • Notable accomplishments: Graduated basic and advanced home obedience class (barely!); passed the therapy-animal evaluation March 2005; accepted to the therapy dog team at a children's hospital March 2006

Kristy's Story (…and She's Sticking With It)

My name is Kristy and they call me the Kamikaze Kissing Machine. I was born January 19, 2002 and I came to the Greyhound Retirement Home in March 2004 as a foster dog. It only took me a few days here to decide I was going to make this my permanent home.

Nobody consulted me about the foster part. There were good beds, there was a yard, there were two other Greyhounds who did not object to me, and there was a small white dog with opinions. I looked at all of it and made an executive decision. My mom and dad like to describe this as a failed foster placement. I describe it as a successful one.

My Racing Career, Such as It Was

There isn't much to say about my racing career. I ran a total of 8 races and never finished better than 5th place, so I was retired before age 2. My racing name was Lift Off, but I guess I never did live up to the name.

My mom says I probably flunked out of racing because my tongue got in the way. I have no rebuttal to offer. Some Greyhounds retire at four or five with dozens of wins behind them — my step-brother Lucky is one of those, and he mentions it more often than strictly necessary. The rest of us come off the track early because we are slow, or bored, or, in my case, distracted. There is no shame in it. Being unemployable at the age of two is how most of us end up on somebody's sofa, and the sofa is objectively the better deal.

Retirement Is Great

Retirement is great. I get to run and play in the yard every day with my new step-brother and sister, and there are lots of good beds to choose from when it's time for nappies. But my favorite thing to do in the whole wide world is to kiss people. I kiss everyone I see, whether I know them or not, and I kiss them over and over until they can't take any more.

I plan to start a new career in kissing as soon as I figure out how to earn a living at it. In the meantime I'll continue to practice on anyone who gets within range of my tongue. I also collect socks. They must be dirty socks, taken from the laundry hamper personally by me; clean socks presented by a human do not count and I want that on the record. My step-brother Ray had a similar interest in the contents of that hamper, which you can read about on his page.

The Serious Part

On March 26, 2005, Kristy and her dad passed the skills and aptitude screening for a national therapy-animal certification program and began making volunteer visits at a hospice residence in Seattle. In March 2006 she was accepted to the therapy dog team at a children's hospital, where she now visits regularly.

Getting there took two full obedience courses and a great deal of patience from everyone except Kristy. A dog who kisses every human within range sounds like an obvious candidate for this work, but the evaluation is not looking for enthusiasm; it is looking for a dog who can be calm, take instruction, tolerate crowding and equipment and noise, and — hardest of all for this one — wait to be invited. She got there. We were as surprised as anybody. There is more about how the screening works, and what animal-assisted therapy actually is, on our therapy dogs page, and the American Veterinary Medical Association's overview of animal-assisted interventions covers the professional side of it properly.

We do not describe the visits themselves and we post no photographs from them. Confidentiality belongs to the people she visits.

In Conclusion, by Kristy

If you are considering a retired racing Greyhound, I recommend it. We are quiet, we are already used to crates and handling, and we sleep roughly twenty hours a day. Read the Greyhound facts page first, because there are things about us that surprise people, and have a look at foster dogs too — that is how I got in the door. The general dog care basics apply to us the same as anyone, except for the part about the sofa, which is mine.