This might be silly, but I love thinking that Riley is apart of "the plan" or that she was meant to be. I already told you that her last race was the same day that Travis passed away, but it also occurred to me that she was sent to Southeastern Greyhound Adoption soon after her race career ended.
How was that possible? Generally, there is a backlog of non-cat-safe greyhounds at the Jefferson County Kennel Club adoption kennel and I wondered how she got to the front of the line without being cat safe. Adoption groups have a high demand for cat safe greyhounds, so those with low prey drives tend to move through the adoption pipeline faster than their high prey drive cousins.
Fortunately, Riley was somehow mislabeled cat safe, so she earned a first class ticket on the next boat to adoption. Well, I don't look at cat safe greyhounds (I know its sad that I don't give those poor dogs a chance.... sorry, Jules, just joking with you :-), so I did not give her even a first look. At the time, I was working with Robin anyway. When Robin left, I rechecked the SEGA website for greyhounds that were not cat safe. By then, Riley had showed her true colors and her cat safe status had been changed. She had been retested and failed. Now I was interested.
So was it fate that brought her to me? I don't know. I was playing with the word "fate" and had narrowed down to the name "Never Doubt Fate". When Toni mentioned "Never A Doubt" in a blog comment, I fell in love with the sound of that. So Riley is also known as "Never A Doubt".
