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Frazzle`s "Gotcha" Story
Written by Deanna
I first "met" Frazzle on GPA-MD's website in September. One of his pictures showed him cuddled up on the couch with a man, and Frazzle looked so very cute. Frazzle's description listed him as an 11 year old large, friendly, alert, smart male who loves to play with stuffies. I would've loved to have adopted him at that point, because while he looked like a total lovebug, he was also 11 years old, and not many people want dogs that old. However, we were very comfortable with four hounds, and we were not willing to have five hounds- four works so well with the two of us. So I just kept my eye on him and hoped someone else would take him home.
Quite unexpectedly, we were forced to help our old boy Marcus go to the Rainbow Bridge on his 12th birthday after he suffered a stroke. I cried and cried and then considered the blessing in disguise--we now had room for Frazzle if he was still available. I contacted Frazzle's foster mom, Sarah, who was also Marcus' foster mom, and asked if Frazzle was still available, if she thought he would still be available when we were ready, or if he had become a permanent foster. Sarah responded that he was still available and a perfectly adoptable dog. She would've loved to adopt him, but she was already one dog over her limit. She said no one had asked about him in the almost three months Frazzle had been with her, but she loved him so much that she would only adopt him out to very special people. Luckily we qualified, and Sarah told me to let her know when we were ready.
We may have gone to get him sooner, but we were committed to fostering a dog right after Thanksgiving, and I didn't want to try to introduce two new dogs to our crew at the same time. The foster ended up being spoken for after only a week, and so, as soon as we knew what day he would be picked up, I called Sarah to talk to her about Frazzle.
Frazzle's story is a bit of a sad one. Basically, his former owner came home one day to find that she had been evicted from her apartment. Her belongings were on the curb and Frazzle had been taken to Animal Control. She was unable to pay for his release, so a friend stepped forward to get him out. He must have spent a few days there, horribly missing his owner, because when they were able to get him out, he was barely able to walk and he had several pressure sores. His legs were so swollen that the vet suspected they had been broken, but luckily, that was not the case. The owner's friend then paid for Frazzle to be boarded until the owner could get back on her feet, but it soon became obvious that would not happen quickly. The friend persuaded the owner to give Frazzle back to an adoption group, after about a month of boarding. Sarah picked him up on GPA's behalf on Labor Day weekend.
After learning some of Frazzle's peculiarities, such as his allergies to turkey and duck, we decided to pick him up the day after the foster left. So we drove to Pennsylvania again and brought home Frazzle on December 11, 2005. We discovered that Frazzle can get quite fixated on stuffy toys--he even figured out how to open the toybox, which I had put all the toys in and shut before we left for Pennsylvania.
Now, I like to know the history of my hounds, so once I had Frazzle's racing name (Bull's Eye Hit) in hand after we brought him home, I tried looking him up on Greyhound-data and Rosnet, both racing greyhound databases. I couldn't find him, so I e-mailed the National Greyhound Association to find out the names of his sire and dam, his exact birthdate, and anything else they could tell me. We were very surprised to learn that Frazzle's sire was Hello Mr. D, who was also Carrie's sire. Carrie and Frazzle are half-siblings! Hello Mr. D was not a particularly prolific sire, so the chances that we would end up with two hounds with the same father is really quite amazing.
Frazzle enjoys cuddling up with me on the couch: even if another hound is on the other end of the couch, he'll find a way to squeeze up there. He is pretty active for his age. If Tyler and Wren are running and playing in the yard, he'll sometimes join them, bounding after them and barking at them (he had a deep "woof" bark). We've also discovered that he will chase people: he and Carrie both chased Brian around the yard one afternoon. Frazzle loves stuffy toys. When either of us come home, he'll run to get a stuffy toy and squeak it at us in greeting. He and the other hounds get along great: he's an excellent addition to our pack.