Introducing Ivy

Introducing Ivy!  I picked her up from the Birmingham track on June 9th.  There were fewer dogs to choose from this time and hardly any females.  Two adoption groups had already earmarked most of the dogs for their programs.  Thankfully one group was willing to let me look at their dogs and indeed I did choose one of them.

Ivy was born in Arkansas, trained in Florida, raced as in Iowa, adopted from Alabama, and now lives in Georgia.  Quite a bit of travel for a 2 year old!

Ivy raced as "Not To Nightdear" a whopping 4 times.  She was a consistent last place finisher except for beating one dog that tripped in one of her races. And then she sat around for a year.

I'm not sure why she then sat around for a year.  On Facebook, her owner said she had a minor injury they rested and rehabbed, but then she was a 2 year old that had not yet won a race so she was retired.  But a year is still a long time. She has been throughly examined multiple times by me and a couple of vets and we find no issues so hopefully it is not something that will pop up again. 

I also took my time adopting her.  I gave her time to heal from her spay, worked hard getting her nails much shorter, and then started training and playing with her.  

I also had a dog fight on day 4 so she was on probation to make sure she could get along in a bitch pack. The dogs and I were out in the mulch potty yard when she and Seven broke out into a full on brawl on their hind legs.  I have no idea why.  I haven't had a dog fight in 15 years so it was quite startling.  Thankfully Ivy was wearing a muzzle and Seven didn't leave a mark. For a couple of days, she was kind of edgy, but it has since melted away.  I don't trust her completely and crate her if I am not supervising, but she really has been great since the first week.

And if you are wondering what happened to Ellie.... I placed her with some friends of mine.  She was doing great, but started to come up a little lame.  Nothing horrible, but just not something I wanted to make worse.  It just was way too soon for her to already have problems.  So a very nice couple I have known for a very long time adopted her.  I could not have been more thrilled.  They are an active home with another greyhound and an Italian greyhound.  She goes for walks, does a little training, caught a squirrel in the backyard, has already been to their mountain cabin a few times, and they love her.