Wheelistically @ Claire.NU

This is Part II, you can see Part I here.

Why did you choose Ziggy?

As I men­tioned before, Ziggy was the “first match” brought out to us; he had a near-identical brother that had been reserved by another lady the pre­vi­ous day (which explains why we have Ziggy in par­tic­u­lar and not his brother). You can read about details of Ziggy’s story prior to his adop­tion over on Ziggy’s About Page.

Ziggy shook with adren­aline at being let out of his ken­nel and intro­duced to us. Quiet but curi­ous, he read­ily came up to invest­ig­ate us and have a good sniff, whilst we cooed and ahh-ed at his big brown eyes and pigeon-toed stance. Dur­ing our hours spent at the ken­nels, we were allowed to take Ziggy for a little walk on our own in the sur­round­ing grounds of the prop­erty. We took him for a gentle stroll, in his muzzle, out on the con­course. Imme­di­ately, we were struck by how gentle he was. He didn’t fuss or pull on the lead — here we were, per­fect strangers and he was happy to stand, be pet­ted and gently guided along. One of the staff had her Primary School-age daugh­ter there, she stood in little, pink Wel­ling­ton boots and was pat­ting Ziggy and hand-feeding him bis­cuits. Hav­ing the oppor­tun­ity to see him inter­act so well with chil­dren was a won­der­ful bonus.

My wheel­chair fas­cin­ated him. When I was sit­ting still, Ziggy took no notice, but the moment I moved, he stopped in his tracks to silently stare and cock his head to one side. He watched the wheels intensely and sniffed and prod­ded at my feet with his nose.

Here’s a per­son, that smells like a per­son and sounds like a per­son, with paws at one end, like all the other people and yet — How’s it DO that?

You could see the con­fu­sion on his little face, he just couldn’t work it out. Is it float­ing? Is it a per­son? Is it some­thing else? Is it scary? Does it smell good? Every time I moved, he was just mes­mer­ised, his ears flick­ing up in alert­ness and puppy-like curi­os­ity, wait­ing for some­thing to hap­pen, though he didn’t know what. It was adorable.

Inside the ken­nels, the move­ment of my chair had spooked some of the dogs that were known to dis­like prams and bug­gies and had sent them off in a frenzy. Know­ing that Ziggy was just a bit con­fused (and not frightened) and that he was so young and likely to be resi­li­ent enough to get used to it reas­sured us that Ziggy was the right dog for us. Ken­nel dogs (grey­hounds espe­cially) have a repu­ta­tion for anxi­ety issues, but see­ing Ziggy respond so calmly to a com­pletely alien stim­uli without the sup­port of famil­iar “pack mem­bers” present, was a big relief. It was import­ant to us that we homed a dog that would actu­ally bene­fit from a Forever Home, as some hounds become so insti­tu­tion­al­ised by years of Ken­nel Life, that rehom­ing is simply a much too stress­ful and cruel pro­cess for them to endure.

Whilst out on the walk, I asked Ziggy if he thought he might like to come home with us and asked K if she thought this dog might be our Ziggy. Ziggy looked at me with his big, brown eyes and K replied that this was def­in­itely our Ziggy — he was exactly the dog we wanted and she thought he looked quite like a Ziggy.

So, Ziggy he was.

What about the adop­tion process?

On our return, we told the ken­nel staff that we were con­fid­ent that they had brought us out the right dog for us; we wanted this one. Ziggy was taken back to his ken­nel and our names were writ­ten on his sign. He was offic­ally reserved. For Us.

This was our dog. From this point, up until we brought him home a week later, I was ter­ri­fied. What if the staff made a mis­take and acci­dent­ally gave our per­fect, beloved little Ziggy to someone else in the mean­time? What if they got the broth­ers mixed up? What if some­thing went wrong and we couldn’t have our Ziggy? From that second on, that doggy was mine and I just wanted to bring him home into my warm and comfy home full of snug­gly blankets, cuddly toys, belly rubs, fun games and yummy treats.

The RGT char­ity do the best they can and you really get a sense from the staff and the volun­teer dog walk­ers that they care about the dogs and would love to see them find a Forever Home and take pride in caring for them until they do, but the harsh facts remain: there simply isn’t the time, money and resources to make Ken­nel Life very comfortable.

These dogs are bred to race, to earn money. If they’re past their racing prime or fail to chase in the first instance, they simply become a waste product, void of value. A lit­ter of eight may only bring one win­ner, maybe two. That leaves at least six pups sur­plus to require­ments, six drains on an owner/trainers resources. If they are for­tu­nate, they may find them­selves placed into an adop­tion scheme, as Ziggy was. But, what becomes abund­antly clear very quickly is how over-subscribed the RGT Ken­nels are. There are 70 RGT branches across the UK, hous­ing 30–50 dogs in each (some­time more), with more com­ing in to them every day. And that’s just one Grey­hound adop­tion organ­isa­tion. There are many, many others.

Ziggy spent years in tiny, cold and draughty ken­nels with no win­dows, no toys for learn­ing and stim­u­la­tion and only saw­dust thrown down on con­crete and shred­ded paper for warmth and com­fort. There are so many dogs in the ken­nels that it simply not pos­sible to ensure they each get even one walk a day, let alone any one-to-one atten­tion and affection.

I found the thought of Ziggy being there a minute longer than he had to very dif­fi­cult. If we’d have had a big­ger home, I’d have adop­ted more than one. If I could, I’d bring another home tomor­row. Leav­ing him there that day, I felt a whole bundle of things: com­plete excite­ment at the thought that we had found the new­est mem­ber of our fam­ily, impa­tience that we couldn’t drive him home there and then and sad­ness that in choos­ing one, we’d left all of the oth­ers behind.

The next stage was the home visit. A RGT volun­teer vis­its your house to inspect that your home is safe and suit­able for a grey­hound, checks you have sufficiently-fenced garden (Greys have been known to clear a 6ft fence from stand­ing), asks ques­tions about your hous­ing (to check that you have land­lord per­mis­sion for a dog), your routine and work and gives advice on feed­ing, exer­cise and answers any ques­tions. Only after passing a home check can you adopt your dog.

We had our visit a few days later and the lady was really lovely. She’d adop­ted two hounds her­self and had lots of funny anec­dotes and advice to share. My Step-Dad and Uncle had worked for days in the lash­ing Novem­ber rain to put up a brand new hound-safe fence in time for our home check, without which, we wouldn’t have passed. We had read over the book and pamph­lets given to us at the ken­nels and had pur­chased the recom­men­ded raised food stand, and some toys, food and bed­ding in advance. She checked all of this over and gave a resound­ing nod of approval.

Two days later, we went back to the ken­nels to col­lect our dog.

What about the paperwork?

We arrived as early as pos­sible on Adop­tion Day and went through the paper­work that signed Ziggy offi­cially over to us and stated that we’d passed the checks and were not going to hurt him. We also registered for his insur­ance (you’re given 4 weeks of com­pli­ment­ary insur­ance when you adopt), col­lec­ted his veter­in­ary paper­work and gave the “recom­men­ded dona­tion” of £100. When you adopt a Grey­hound, the dog comes to you with a brand new leather sighthound col­lar and lead, a plastic box muzzle, has been neutered and vac­cin­ated, and has had a full vet-check and dental. The dona­tion goes towards these costs.

Ziggy chose a blue muzzle, we clipped on his house col­lar with his shiny new name tag (and his shiny NEW NAME) on it and we had his walk­ing col­lar sized and fit­ted. K went to ask ques­tions about meal por­tions, whilst I did the bor­ing bit of filling forms in block capitals.

Finally, we were ready to take our boy home.