This has been our very bad year, tempered with a few good things, like we survived and Bella.
The day after Thanksgiving Xena had to be euthanized. She had pulled up with a limp before I went in for the knee replacement. The vet prescribed some painkillers, thinking that perhaps she had strained a muscle. When I returned home 2 weeks later, the limp was still there and the drugs weren't touching the pain. She was panting a lot at night. The vet kept saying it was a torn ACL.
We finally took her to a different vet (it was hard as SR couldn't drive and I had the surgery and had to wait for the OK to drive. I had to time driving between pain med administration's I got off the pain melds).
They took crays and Xena had asceticism, bone cancer. We couldn't let her suffer.
We lost Blue, the pooch in my avatar, April 1st, some April fools day. Besides his epilepsy, he had cancer. We were lucky to have the dogs as long as we did. Blue was a week shy of 12 and Xena was 11 1/2. It was just tough. We really loved those dogs.
That's why Bella and Darlene make us smile. We couldn't let Darlene, or us, be alone.
SLW, I live in the seacoast of New Hampshire, We had a bit down the road a Dog racing track, there was a holding area for the dogs before and after racing, inside with big windows of people with kiddies could look in.
The local schools hired kids to walk them to the starting gates, then collect them after the race to go back into the inside pens. All looked clean and neat, dogs appeared to be well cared for.
Something came up, rumors of dark nature and out of the blue the Grayhound rescue were beating the drum for people to adopt the dogs that were not race worthy.
The rescue was so desperate they were almost giving the dogs away, They went from adopting a dog to a family with and acre for it to run to training the dogs to be service dogs.
Peta got involved some how as did other Amimal rights group and claimed that these dogs born to run should not be placed with anyone that needed them for service dogs or were unable to let the dogs run. The dogs proved them wrong.
Many of these dogs were to become help mates to senior citizens or children with medical needs. The need to run seemed to disappear when the dog was given a job to do, trained to pull a wheel chair, open doors and stand still when someone needed to lean on them to get out of bed.
Then the second shoe dropped. the farm the racing dogs were kept at came under investigation, they found an excess of 125+ dogs buried on the property. Why feed a dog that cannot win a race was their excuse.
Horrid thing to happen but we are just a small comunity and this must be going on most everywhere.
You mentioned your new dog is an adult that had been a slow racer, best kind from what I hear. SLW you are blessed to have the new dog, especially a grayhound that never had love from a humane before. There is a special place for people like you beyond the Rainbow Bridge, goodness and mercy will follow you all your life and beyond.
