Barking

Are you a cat person or a dog person? I’m both. I never intended on owning either, it just seemed to happen. My dogs are both lurchers, which is a type rather than a specific breed, sighthounds cross bred with something else. Here’s how it started.

I’m going to see my friend tomorrow, Star’s had puppies.  

Really? You’re not coming home with one.

Don’t worry, I won’t.

The next day mid afternoon the phone rings.

Can I bring a puppy home? She’s so sweet, she came and lay next to me, she came back after feeding to sit with me.

I thought you were allergic to dogs, particularly Star?

This dog is smooth coated unlike Star, we talked about getting a dog before, this one has chosen me, all the others are running about mental and this one came over and slept beside me all afternoon. 

*sigh* On one condition, ask if you can take her a couple of days to make sure you and the kids don’t end up allergied up to the eyeballs, otherwise you have to take her back.

OK, thank you! 

Yes, but any problems and you have to be allowed take her back, don’t  bring her home if you won’t be allowed to take her back! I hung up wondering if I’d really just agreed to getting a dog. I was secretly quite pleased, but I didn’t want to get my hopes up if it wasn’t going to work out.

When previously discussing dogs I’d said I’d easily take a rescue greyhound or something if we were to get a dog. We hadn’t done this due to concerns about allergies and them chasing the cats. Lurchers are the ideal kind of dog for us, they’re lazy dogs, but enjoy a good run-around.  I arrived home from work that night to see little white puppy, who was very happy to meet me.

Alright, maybe you did the right thing!

Don’t worry she won’t be sleeping in our bed.

Sure about that?

Definitely! 

Over a year later we have own a large dog who shares our bed and tries to sneakily push me out in the middle of the night. Luna is a cross Deerhound/Greyhound/Saluki/Collie. We generally take her everywhere with us, she has separation anxiety so we try not to leave her too long.

At some point during that year we joined the Lurcher Appreciation Society on Facebook. Regularly there’s was posts asking people if they can get dogs of Gumtree marked as “free to good home” as soon as possible. The reason for this being that such dogs are used in dog fighting.

We both decided it would be nice to get a second dog to keep Luna company and to be able to get a rescue or older dog that needed a home. After a couple months of half looking, a dog was put into a rescue not too far from us.

We phoned up the vet that had posted about the dog, got the details of Claire who had rescued the dog. Claire has managed the phenomenal task of rescuing and re-homing over 500 dogs off her own back.

The following day I went off with Luna and one of the kids to go and see the dog. The dog was a little smaller than Luna, the two of them seemed to get along ok, she was ecstatic to see people, very friendly, much easier to walk than Luna and we discovered she could jump over a 4 foot high fence, something Luna never does.

The next day I took my wife and other child to go an see this dog to see what they thought. They both liked her and again I took her on a short walk. We had a few days to think about things and I ended up going to pick her up.

Her story is that she was about 9 months old and came to Scotland via Ireland and some travellers. She had been in Wick, someone had tried to train her for hunting (illegal!), but she was no good at it, so she was sold to someone in Fife who also failed to train her to hunt. The man went to dump her and Claire caught him in the act. The following day he had the audacity to come back to ask Claire for the collar back because “it was worth money”.

She had been called the highly original Lassie, which Claire had been trying to change to Lass. We took her home and debated over what to call her, settling on Cassie since it was similar so it would make it easier for her to respond to and it’s also short for Cassiopeia. Astronomically named dogs in our house. Cassie, we think is a greyhound or whippet/collie/staffy cross.

We’ve had to do a lot of work with Cassie, it’s no been easy the past couple of months, but we’re getting there. It’s taken her 2-3 months to adjust. She’s different to Luna, she was kept in a kennel her entire life, so we had to toilet train her. Which wasn’t too bad, I remember how long it took to train Luna, and we got her at 8 weeks! She had little or no recall. We had to put up some trellis to heighten our fence to stop her jumping over it. We took her and Luna to Skye to visit some friends and they both behaved very well and amusingly Cassie slept flat on her back on the bed with her paws in the air all night.

We have to be careful not to leave things lying about as Cassie loves to chew on everything she shouldn’t. So wooden furniture gets sprayed with anti chew stuff. Thankfully she has stopped a weird habit that had appeared out of nowhere, when she pee’d on the couch or one of our beds. It would seem this behaviour is relating to wanting to fit in and wanting to smell of ‘us’. Don’t ask me how that works, I read it on-line it could be bollocks.

The past few weeks, she seems to be noticeably more settled and her and Luna love nothing more than tearing about chasing each other around the beach, woods or a field. Luna on the other hand doesn’t love Cassie when she’s at home and is jealous if anyone gives Cassie attention and not her!

I wonder how we went so long not having them? Walks are great for catching up on podcasts I’m behind on and more importantly clearing my head. Giving dogs that have been in the sea or mud a bath isn’t that fun, but Luna entertainingly looks more like a Llama afterwards. They both enjoy going to the pub or visiting other people’s homes.

There is nothing better than coming home from work to two dogs bursting out the front door, so happy to see me when I’ve been out at work all day.