Wheelistically @ Claire.NU

Racing Name: Moss Ted
Ear Mark/Tattoos: HZ-JXB
Sex: Dog
Date of Birth: 28^th Octo­ber 2007
Place of Birth: Ire­land
Sire: Go Wild Teddy
Dam: Moss Time
Trainer: Mr. Robert Kerr
Adop­tion: Brent­wood RGT on the 12^th Novem­ber 2009
Racing & Blood­line Data: Ziggy’s Entry @ Greyhound-Data and Ziggy’s Entry and Ziggy’s Ped­i­gree @ IGB.

Ziggy is our 2 year old adop­ted Grey­hound. The Grand-Pup of a World Cham­pion sire and registered with the Racing name “Moss Ted”, it seemed Ziggy was born for life on the track.

Ziggy, how­ever, had other ideas.

Bred in Ire­land (from an Aus­tralian sire) and born on the 28^th Octo­ber 2007, Ziggy (unlike five of his known sib­lings) failed to chase in train­ing and so never made his racing debut. Trans­por­ted in 2009 with one other brother (Ricos Time), the pair lived in ken­nels in the North of Eng­land, whilst the rest of the lit­ter went on to form their careers as racers.

At the end of Septem­ber that year, the broth­ers were moved to Ash­wells Grey­hound Ken­nels, under the care of the Retired Grey­hound Trust. Hav­ing been given no (pet) names and being near-identical in their mark­ings, the dogs were referred to as “Ant and Dec” (on account of them hav­ing come from up-north), by the Ken­nel staff, although neither dog learnt these names.

We first met Ziggy on the 4^th Novem­ber 2009, just a week after his second birth­day. The staff had listened to our con­cerns: what we wanted from a dog, what we could provide for a dog and details about our home and life, via a tele­phone call in advance, and had made a list of pro­spect­ive can­did­ates. Ziggy was at the top of the list as an ideal “match”.

He took to us as quickly as we did to him and the fol­low­ing week on 12^th Novem­ber 2009, we gave him his (proper) name and took him to his new “forever home”, where he now lives with us: his new people.

Ziggy loves people.

To Ziggy, every stranger he meets has been put on this Earth espe­cially for him to say hello to. He loves to greet people and enjoys rubs behind the ears and fuss in his own gentle way. His favour­ite toys are cuddly ones that he can snuggle up to in his bed and make him feel safe and squeaky, fluffy ones that he can chase around the garden and “kill”. A sens­it­ive boy, he hides from the scary vacuum cleaner and dis­likes any­thing that makes a loud bang.

Although it’s safe to say he’ll never give Lassie a run for her money, he under­stands and responds to approx­im­ately 15 words and gives really good paw. As is com­mon for a Grey­hound, he finds it almost impossible to assume the stand­ard “sit” pos­i­tion due to his hind legs being so heav­ily packed with large, power­ful muscles. He does how­ever adopt the clas­sic grey­hound “Sphinx”-like pos­i­tion, which we hap­pily accep­ted as his ver­sion of a “sit”.

His favour­ite things to do are: sleep, play fight with his people in bed first thing in the morn­ing, sleep, eat, sleep, chase and “attack” his toys, sleep, run really fast, sleep, eat any­thing beefy and sleep some more.

Ziggy would have you believe it’s hard work being a Hound. I’m not convinced.

You can fol­low Ziggy’s adven­tures through his photo set, here