Hounds
Home > Stories of 2006 > Symbra`s "Gotcha" Story
Symbra`s "Gotcha" Story
Written by Brian
After we lost Tyler to cancer, we were concerned about how Wren would react to him being gone. We had adopted Tyler to be her playmate, and they were very close. A few days after we lost Tyler, she began to show signs that she missed him: she would occasionally look for him around the house, and she was also more vocal and demanded more attention from us.
Deanna started to look at the greyhounds that were available for adoption from our local greyhound groups for a possible new playmate for Wren, a hound close in age to Wren who was playful. One hound that caught her attention was a girl named Waimea. Waimea had been in the care of Greyhound Welfare since she retired from racing in the summer. According to her bio on the Greyhound Welfare website, Waimea had been very shy and easily frightened when she first came off the track, but she was a lot calmer and more confident after having been fostered for several months.
We learned that Waimea was going to be at one of Greyhound Welfare's meet-and-great events at the Petsmart store in Laurel, MD (not far from where we live), so we took all of our hounds there to participate in the event and meet her. When Waimea arrived, we let our hounds check her out and vice-versa. Despite her shy reputation, Waimea seemed quite comfortable around all of the hounds that were there at the event, including ours. We learned that even though she had been given the name Waimea when Greyhound Welfare got her from the track, she was still more inclined to respond to her track name, Symbra: she would come over to us any time we called her by that name.
We talked about her on our way home from the event. Based on her interactions with our hounds and what we'd heard about her, we felt that she would probably get along with our hounds (even Carrie, who was sometimes touchy around other females). We had also learned that she seemed happiest when housed with other dogs, so much so that the adoption group was looking to place her in a home with other dogs, which cut down on the number of potential adopters. The biggest question we had was whether or not she would turn out to be an active playmate for Wren. There was no real way to tell. We decided to give it some more thought. We agreed that we couldn't really adopt her right away anyway: we were traveling to Deanna's parents' house for Thanksgiving, where it was possible that we would have a house full of seven people and seven dogs, and we felt that would be overwhelming for her (and possibly for us!).
The week before Thanksgiving, Deanna talked to some of the folks who had fostered or otherwise spent time with Symbra (we started referring to her as Symbra after that meet-and-greet). Everyone Deanna talked to agreed that Symbra had come a long way since her arrival in Maryland and that she was a sweet little girl. At one point, she had been fostered in a home with three other greyhounds, and apparently she had really enjoyed her stay. She was also told that once Symbra got used to her surroundings, she would show her playful side, chewing on stuffed toys and running around with the other hounds.
Based on this new information, we decided that, barring any unusual developments, we would go ahead and adopt her. We proceeded with the next step, which was to bring our hounds over to the house Symbra was staying at for a home visit, where the hounds could interact leash-free to see how they would interact. Symbra's current foster family was out-of-town for the entire Thanksgiving week, so she was staying with Jenny Glenn over in University Park (a neighborhood very near the University of Maryland). So the Tuesday before Thanksgiving, I met Deanna and the hounds over at Jenny's house and we let them hang out together. It was no different from the meet-and-greet: they all sniffed each other and interacted peacefully. At certain points, it seemed like they were establishing pack dynamics: Symbra would stand still next to one of our crew and let them inspect her so they would accept her. Since everything went well, we told Jenny that we would adopt her, and that we would stop by Saturday evening after returning from Pennsylvania.
After a nice Thanksgiving, we drove home to Maryland, unpacked, fed our hounds, set up the crate for Symbra in the living room, and went to go pick her up. She was uncertain about what was going on when we took her outside to the van, but after a few moments she hopped into the back and laid down. She was calm but not completely relaxed as we drove her to her new home.
When we arrived, she was greeted and sniffed by our crew, but she was more interested in checking out the house. She wandered around from room to room, checking out the place. After she felt she had seen enough, she went into the crate and laid down. We were glad to see that: we knew that she, like most ex-racers recently off the track, considered the crate as a place of safety.
When we went to bed that night, we didn't want her wandering around the house in the dark--we knew if she were to come into our bedroom and startle Carrie, she would probably get bitten--so we closed the door to her crate so she would stay put. After we were in bed for awhile, Symbra started to whine. Deanna ended up sleeping out on the couch in the living room to keep her company.
The next day we fed Symbra her first meal with us. It was her first raw diet meal: a vegetable mix with some canned salmon stirred in. She ate it right up: I even had to keep her away from everyone else's bowl while they finished. She apparently decided that she liked something about the office and spent most of her time there. We thought that was an odd choice, considering most of the dog beds, the dog toys, and her crate were all in the living room, but we decided to let her be where she was most comfortable. When it was time for bed, she decided that she wanted to sleep in there and not in her crate. Deanna decided to let Symbra sleep there, but she wanted to keep an eye on her, so she ended up sleeping in the office with her.
We've now had Symbra for over a week. She still likes to be in the office, so much so that we moved her crate in there, and she will relax in the crate now that it's there. She seems to be more comfortable with Deanna than she is with me, but she doesn't hang out with us or the other hounds very much. Still, she has had bouts of playfulness, and has run around in the yard when Wren a few times. We feel confident that, given some more time, she'll become comfortable and confident with us and be a happy member of our pack.