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Carrie`s "Gotcha" Story
Note: this is a copy of the web page that Deanna originally wrote soon after we got Carrie, our third greyhound:
As with Tyler, we adopted Carrie fairly quickly. It started by taking Tyler to the vet to get a weirdly-healing wound on his side checked out. While we were there, the vet tried to determine when Tyler's vaccinations were due, and also pulled up Wren's records. He was getting a little frustrated trying to interpret the track vet records, so finally he said, "We'll do all of Tyler's shots today, do all of Wren's in May, and then do them both at the same time in April next year." Knowing that Brian and I would be adopting a third dog some time soon, I asked, "Okay, but what if we get a third dog?" The vet gave me a look of mock horror and said, "Don't do that to me!"
I reported this story to GreyTalk, a discussion board for greyhound owners and added that I did want to add a third hound to our family and that it would be a senior or a foster or both, but I would have to buy a minivan first, and I wasn't quite ready to do that. I made that post the evening of Wednesday, February 11. By early afternoon on Thursday, I had received a private message from Gil of Greyt Adventures Greyhound Adoption in Richmond, VA asking me if I had seen his post about a senior girl who had been returned because her adoptive family was getting a divorce and they didn't want to care for the greyhound any more. He wanted to try to adopt her locally. I wrote back that I had seen the post, but finances were a concern and it would take me a few days to figure out if I was in a position to adopt right then. He told me that was fine.
So I thought about it some more, and decided to call Brian at work and tell him to look at the pictures and the thread on GreyTalk about this girl. I didn't tell him why, I just told him to look at her and read her story. When he got home that evening, I told them that we had been asked to adopt Carrie. Within an hour, I was e-mailing Gil and telling him that we wanted to meet Carrie. We decided to take Wren and Tyler and meet him at a dog park in Fredericksburg, VA on Saturday. I spent Friday questioning our sanity- possibly adopting our third hound in six months.
Wren, Tyler, and Carrie weren't what I would call best buds- they mostly ignored each other- but at least there was no outward signs of agression and Carrie is a beautiful, sweet, happy girl. Brian had wanted a fawn girl when we started the application process for our first grey, so that made him happy, and we were adopting a senior, so that made me happy. We packed three greyhounds in the back seat of a Toyota Camry and headed for home. We made a quick stop at PetSmart to make a "Carrie Swartzfager" name tag for her to make her officially part of our family.
Two weeks after bringing her home, Carrie has been an absolute joy. She loves to be petted and will scootch herself closer if you lay down next to her and start petting. If you stop, she'll nose her head under your hand to let you know that you weren't done yet. She has at least as much energy as the much younger Wren and Tyler. Carrie likes to play "chicken" - she'll run at you at top speed and then veer off at the last second. She loves to nest- rearranging her blankets until they are just right. She will occasionally sleep in bed with us- I'm still trying to figure out if there is a pattern to when she will join us in bed. She definitely comes up when invited. Carrie is also a collector- any footwear not behind closed doors is fair game to be moved to the living room. She doesn't chew them, but I have seen her toss them around a little like they were stuffies. Oh, and she does play with stuffies very actively. At a fun run a week after bringing her home, a fellow grey owner commented, "She knows who her mommy and daddy are." It is hard to believe that she has been here only two weeks.
I traded in my Toyota Corolla for a Toyota Sienna less than 48 hours after Carrie arrived.