Our adopted greyhounds love people. They love having visitors. It’s like Christmas when visitors come to the house and even better when visitors bring wrapping paper (with or without a present inside).
Brody used to be the first to the door, but he’s older now, so he lets the annoying whippersnapper, Bandit, and the queen, Boo, handle the initial greetings these days.
While our adopted greyhounds have pretty good manners, a visitor means they get to show off all their cool skills. Usually all at once.
Skills? Sure, skills like the vertical leap or ability to kiss a visitor’s face.
Brody used to teach all of our foster greyhounds to be exceptions to the general rule of ‘no barking’. With adopted greyhounds there are always brief bursts of happy roo-roo-roo-ing, but Brody has taught many a foster to use their voice more frequently. My apologies.
Boo wasn’t obnoxious about jumping. Oh, she’d bounce around a bit when the leash came out, but it wasn’t a problem. Then Bandit came on the scene.(he taught her to like ice cubes too, a much more manageable habit). When Bandit would jump (and sort of get away with it) Boo started jumping too. This greyhound girl has a heck of a vertical leap for an average size greyhound, and lately most of our guests are seeing it for themselves.
(Recently a female greyhound set the world record for best vertical with 15 feet. But she doesn’t live with us).
No, don’t cancel your visit to our domestic petting zoo just yet…
Does she listen to the commands? On a good day, yes, but it’s a hard skill to practice without encouraging the jumping in the first place.
Now Bandit is tall enough on his back legs to kiss my 6’2″ son on the face. While we’ve finally managed to train him to calm down fairly quickly when visitors arrive (admittedly it’s more about him aging out of the hyper-puppy stage than our training skills) if the visitor is male, he goes into his super happy mode.
With smaller kids, he’s very gentle, but with adults, he fights the urge to be obnoxiously boisterous. Bandit wants to behave, really, truly.
I believe all three of our adopted greyhounds want to behave. It’s not just a fantasy. I think they know showing off good manners makes me happy and is just as valuable as showing they can talk, jump, and give you hugs and kisses.
Live the greyhound adventure!
