Greyhound Humor: Tucson Foster Failure

Written by Judith Weiser

Dear Friends and family,

I am a FAILURE!

A foster failure, that is.  In the dog rescuing world, someone who agrees to foster an animal and then cannot bear to part with it is a “foster failure”.  In my case, Arizona Greyhound Rescue (AGR) put out a plea for temporary fosters for a couple of dogs that had spay surgery coming up.  (Everyone likes a little TLC after surgery!)  One was described as  “petite female”, and that description caught my interest for reasons explained below.  (I had already promised Slim that I would honor him by lavishing my love on another deserving hound when the time was right.) 

So, I picked up “Bella Wetnwild” at the kennel and dropped her off to be spayed.  When I went back to get her afterwards, she was still VERY dopey, and I understood why AGR did not want these dogs to just go back to their cage at the kennel post surgery.  She was able to stagger to the car, but the vet tech had to pick her up and put her behind the front seats.  She stood up for a few minutes, leaning against the back wall of the cab.  The next thing I knew, she was down for the count.

Bella Wetnwild, quickly renamed Donut, was barely 2 years old and had just started her racing career when she experienced  a minor but career-ending crack in a bone in one of her rear legs during a race.  Lucky Dog!  (And lucky me, I didn’t have to deal with yucky teeth from years of eating that soft hi protein racing goo!)

We spent four days together before I had to go back to work.  Each of us had things to learn.  She learned that even if you go behind the closet door, you’re NOT gonna find that dog from the mirror on the other side. 

I had to learn that Donut was just like me when I was a kid: if you told me not to do something, it made it that much more attractive.  

When I put up baby gates blocking the kitchen & the stairs, she figurered out a way to get over, under, thru or around them.  (I actually think she FLEW into the loft and back down while I was at work one day.  The barriers were totally undisturbed, but she definitely had been up there.)  So the barriers came down, I pulled the knobs off the stove and I taught her how to climb up & down the stairs.  (Something Slim never learned, even tho he REALLY wanted to hang out with me up there.)  Donut has claimed the loft as her hangout when I’m at work.  She sits on the couch looking out the window until she is tired, then sacks out until I get home.

Donut has become more comfortable here every day.  She is less leery and more playful.  Through it all she has been nothing but sweet and loving.  A woman at the dog park this morning told me “Inside that great big chest Greyhounds have is nothin’ but heart!”   I think she summed it up.

Oh yeah, and I found Donut upstairs the other day lookin’ out the window and she was nothin’ but SMILES.

The name Donut is in honor of AGR’s Daphne, who never made it to her forever home.  I got very attached to her after meeting her at the kennel almost 4 years ago, and always referred to her as “Lil Donut”.   (I used to say she was Slim’s “mini me”, since she looked just like him, but weighed about half as much!)   After we lost her, I told myself if I ever had a petite female, I would call her Donut and give her the kind of home that I wished Daphne could have had.

Judith Weiser