Porcia’s Greyhound Retirement Home Retired racers, one small terrier, and everything we learned from them
A Greyhound in a padded coat standing on wet sand beside driftwood on a grey Pacific beach
A Greyhound in a padded coat standing on wet sand beside driftwood on a grey Pacific beach

Photo Album

This is the part of the site that took the longest to build and the least time to enjoy. Over the years we accumulated an indecent number of photographs of four Greyhounds and one Smooth Fox Terrier, and the captions were mostly written by the dogs, who are not modest.

The portraits came first. There is Porcia with her mouth open and her eyes half shut: How's this for a Greyhound smile? There is Ray in the classic pose, both ears up and rotated forward like satellite dishes, captioned I'm all ears! There is Kristy, who informed us that I think I was a model in a previous life, and who is also responsible for Who says Greyhounds don't sit? Greyhounds famously do not sit well, having been built without the necessary equipment, so the photographic evidence was considered important.

The Beach and the Outdoors

Every trip out of the house produced pictures, mostly because a Greyhound at speed is genuinely worth photographing and almost impossible to photograph. There is the one captioned Where's the beach?, taken on a gray Puget Sound shoreline where the sand was mostly gravel and nobody cared. There is a set of the dogs in their protective goggles, filed under Dig these goggles babe!, which were bought for medical reasons and worn with tremendous swagger.

In the back yard: I've still got it!, a retired racer chasing opossums with all the seriousness of a Saturday afternoon at the track, and Catch Me If You Can, which shows a toy rabbit apparently pursuing a Greyhound and is captioned Rabbit Chases Greyhound? In retirement, the rabbit chases you.

Three dogs and a small terrier eating breakfast from bowls on a sunny stone terrace
Three dogs and a small terrier eating breakfast from bowls on a sunny stone terrace

Breakfast at the Public Market

The whole gang used to go down to the public market for breakfast, which produced some of our favorite pictures on the site. Three large dogs eating outdoors in a busy market is an event, and strangers came over constantly, which is exactly why we went. Ray's opinion of the market was uncomplicated: it is where the cheese curd lives. There is also one of Porcia in 1999, thoroughly enjoying a big summer food festival downtown, in which she is being fed by at least three people who do not know each other.

A Greyhound standing in deep fresh snow in a fenced back garden
A Greyhound standing in deep fresh snow in a fenced back garden

Winter

Snow is rare enough in Seattle that each fall of it got its own photographs. The best of them is Ray's First Snowstorm, in which a very tall dog stands at the edge of the deck, one foot raised, contemplating an entirely white world. The caption is his: I can't pee in this! He did eventually, under protest, and came straight back inside to lie against the heater. Add to that a series of holiday pictures in which everybody is wearing something they did not consent to.

A Greyhound and a small scruffy dog meeting nose to nose on a summer lawn
A Greyhound and a small scruffy dog meeting nose to nose on a summer lawn

Sleeping

By volume, this is most of the album, which is only honest given that a Greyhound sleeps about eighteen hours a day. There is Is this bed cool or what?, and Sleeping Beauty with her caption Am I a princess or what?, and one titled Nappies proving that Fox Terriers actually do sleep once in a while, which we had begun to doubt.

The centerpiece of the section is our contribution to veterinary science, a photograph of a sleeping Greyhound with four inches of tongue hanging out of the side of his mouth, captioned Greyhound Tongue Disorder: afflicts most Greyhounds. There is no known cure. Anyone who has lived with the breed recognizes the condition immediately.

A brindle Greyhound curled improbably small into a single armchair in the afternoon sun
A brindle Greyhound curled improbably small into a single armchair in the afternoon sun

The Terrier and the Greyhounds

The mixed household photographs are the ones we like best. Zoe, Ray and Kristy lined up together and told to Say cheese!!! Zoe and Porcia at the park, captioned by Zoe as Me and my sis, which was generous of her given the fifty pound difference. Kristy doing what she does best, under the caption Kisses!!!, at very close range. And Bobbing for Weenies, an activity of our own invention, in which somebody has come up triumphant and dripping: I got one!!!

There are also the arrival pictures, including Kristy's limousine from Kansas City and the moment she met mom for the first time, and the first meeting with Lucky at his foster home. Those two, together on one bed, remain our favorite photo of the pair.

The dogs themselves have proper pages: Porcia, Ray, Kristy and Lucky. If you want the explanation for the goggles, that is on the Pannus page, and the visiting dogs who appear in some of these pictures are introduced on the foster dogs page.