Rescue greyhounds - the facts, not the hype.....

I’ll hold my hands up to restarting this thread 😂

I basically searched for anything related to galgos in the hope of maybe somehow finding anyone who went through a similar (and really upsetting, stressful & awful) ordeal after adopting a Spanish Galgo from a particular charity.

From the story above about the elderly couple with the runaway Galgo & the information that the charity runs out of an office & uses kennels I suspect that is the same charity. If it is then nothing has changed ….. to the huge detriment of the dogs being brought over & to the adopters.

Of course we take our side in the responsibility as we adopted a foreign dog - I do however realise now the enormous difference between a retired greyhound (we had 2 wonderful greys previously) and a Galgo who despite being described as Spanish greyhounds our experience was vastly different.
 
moonieboonies said:
I’ll hold my hands up to restarting this thread 😂

I basically searched for anything related to galgos in the hope of maybe somehow finding anyone who went through a similar (and really upsetting, stressful & awful) ordeal after adopting a Spanish Galgo from a particular charity.

From the story above about the elderly couple with the runaway Galgo & the information that the charity runs out of an office & uses kennels I suspect that is the same charity. If it is then nothing has changed ….. to the huge detriment of the dogs being brought over & to the adopters.

Of course we take our side in the responsibility as we adopted a foreign dog - I do however realise now the enormous difference between a retired greyhound (we had 2 wonderful greys previously) and a Galgo who despite being described as Spanish greyhounds our experience was vastly different.
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Hi, welcome to the forum.
You'll find that if you hover your mouse over a user name you can see when a poster was around.
The person posting about the Galgo incident hasn't logged on since October 2020. They may still get email alerts that the thread has a reply but you might be better starting your own thread in the All About Dogs section.
 
moonieboonies said:
Of course we take our side in the responsibility as we adopted a foreign dog - I do however realise now the enormous difference between a retired greyhound (we had 2 wonderful greys previously) and a Galgo who despite being described as Spanish greyhounds our experience was vastly different.
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You have my sympathy! I have whippets. Of the current 2 one is a lazy, silly dufus and a delight. The other one is very sharp. An out and out athlete and working dog. I adore him, but do find him exhausting sometimes. Hes 20kgs but will take down full grown roe deer stags if he gets a chance, I spend my life on red alert for deer. Then he gets depressed if he's not allowed to hunt, wont be fobbed off with racing or flirt poles. He considers that just stupid.

He is the most amazing, clever, loving and loyal dog I've ever owned and I thank god on a daily basis that he does have the typical whippet sleepy gene and sleeps 18 hours a day!
 
I'm Dun said:
You have my sympathy! I have whippets. Of the current 2 one is a lazy, silly dufus and a delight. The other one is very sharp. An out and out athlete and working dog. I adore him, but do find him exhausting sometimes. Hes 20kgs but will take down full grown roe deer stags if he gets a chance, I spend my life on red alert for deer. Then he gets depressed if he's not allowed to hunt, wont be fobbed off with racing or flirt poles. He considers that just stupid.

He is the most amazing, clever, loving and loyal dog I've ever owned and I thank god on a daily basis that he does have the typical whippet sleepy gene and sleeps 18 hours a day!
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I appreciate the sympathy - thank you! I totally get it that flirt poles aren’t cutting the mustard when there’s hunting that could be happening (for us it was squirrels & rodents). Sadly the Galgo did not come with the sleepy gene & literally only settled down once it got dark! Not so bad in the winter but summer was horrific … still whining & crying to go for a walk at 9pm at night, after already having had 3 hours off lead during the day. So she’d make do with a squeaky ball in the garden for 10 mins!

After 15 months of constant behaviour & health concerns, despite my huge reluctance to hand her back to this charity I had no choice sadly. I tried other sighthound rescues with no luck as I really didn’t want her going back into kennels but in the end had to put my young child, sanity & stress levels first.
 
Its really sad for them, some do settle but once they've lived that sort of life and loved it, its incredibly hard to settle into normal life. Some are just hard wired to hunt. They get such a chemical high from it, it must be like being a drug addict. I sometimes feel sorry for my boy as he would have made the most outstanding working dog, but the sort of home I'd want for him don't really exist anymore, and while he wants to hunt, he wants to do an hour then come home, have his fancy carefully balanced expensive dinner and then be cuddled and cosseted and tucked up in my bed. Hes just woken up and come and flopped across me so I can cuddle him. Hes very spoilt. We compromise in that he's allowed to hunt rabbits and squirrels, that keeps him happy and means the deer are safe, and so is he as I have no doubt that if I let him he would chase them across the M1 if that's where they went. When they click into hunting mode they don't think about anything else, especially not their own safety!

I couldn't have coped with yours either, I don't think many people could have.
 
I'm Dun said:
Its really sad for them, some do settle but once they've lived that sort of life and loved it, its incredibly hard to settle into normal life. Some are just hard wired to hunt. They get such a chemical high from it, it must be like being a drug addict. I sometimes feel sorry for my boy as he would have made the most outstanding working dog, but the sort of home I'd want for him don't really exist anymore, and while he wants to hunt, he wants to do an hour then come home, have his fancy carefully balanced expensive dinner and then be cuddled and cosseted and tucked up in my bed. Hes just woken up and come and flopped across me so I can cuddle him. Hes very spoilt. We compromise in that he's allowed to hunt rabbits and squirrels, that keeps him happy and means the deer are safe, and so is he as I have no doubt that if I let him he would chase them across the M1 if that's where they went. When they click into hunting mode they don't think about anything else, especially not their own safety!

I couldn't have coped with yours either, I don't think many people could have.
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I can’t tell you how much I appreciate your last paragraph. The charity made me feel like such a failure & also just fell off the radar contact wise as soon as we’d adopted.

Your boy sounds super & if it had just been 1 hour instead of 3 per day (in fact possibly all day if she could have) and once home she curled up, and she was with us as a family but she literally lived in one room of the house. She appeared for food (high quality by the end, home cooking for her potential pancreatitis) & walks …. was still really nervous of my husband & literally had turned this room of our house into a kennel!! Also the concerns over her health & the fact we’d spent thousands of ££££ that seemed like it was never ending (insurance issues also - it’s all such a long, messsy mess!) Though I will say for the most part her recall was amazing! Unless she was on squirrel patrol … before Christmas she did manage to kill one & I swear it was a dream come true for her! Also seemed it was a gift for me which I guess was sweet - since she dropped it in front of me & didn’t eat it like she did with the mice or voles ….
 
Also ….. I did always think she looked like an overgrown whippet! She had these incredible springy back legs - and I think it was that hunting instinct / scent tracking, pouncing ability that was so very different to greyhounds!

Also it’s so true - how hard to be cooped up in a house when you’ve been used to free roaming & hunting ….. one of the trainers we worked with did say that galgos are working / hunting dogs not family pets & she thinks it’s so wrong asking some to live as pets. She was the trainer who got us to get the flirt poles 😂 …. but also the squeaky rugby shaped ball that our girl loved to carry in her mouth …

Like your boy - I have to say she was super smart & a very gentle, sweet dog but who also needs to be living on a farm but as you say - those homes / jobs don’t exist anymore for sighthounds ….
 
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