Dog Blog: Brothers and Sisters

Don’t read this post unless you’re seriously into greyhounds or are welsh and can follow a lineage to the nth generation! Boat blogs will re-start shortly as we start Odyssey 2009 tomorrow with a one day hop towards the Thames !!!!!!

Blue in action....

Now the idea of family, of brothers and sisters bonding together happily to support each other and their aged parents is a very human thing. Maybe this is why we can’t help but apply the same principle to our dogs.

Through the greyhound data website we’ve been able to find out huge amounts of information about Blue and Lou’s  pedigree.

Blue is the offspring of Druids Ellymay and Honcho Classic and has three recognised litter-mates:

1 brother: Sizzler’s Turbo

2 sisters: Cordon Bleu and Druids BiddyBleu

Incidentally, Blue’s dad is an award winning stud with almost 5,000 offspring to his name; at those odds it’s a wonder that we didn’t rehome one of Blue’s half-siblings just by accident!

Blue's brother - Sizzler's Turbo

Anyway, we’ve long cherished the ambition of rehoming one of his full-blood siblings, despite that fact that we know that living with close family is no guarantee of domestic harmony either in the dog or human world 🙂

We narrowly missed meeting Blue’s brother as he was rehomed a few weeks before we traced him to a greyhound rescue centre in Surrey. The people at the shelter kindly gave us a photo of Sizzler’s Turbo enjoying himself with his new packmates at his new home which, by coincidence, is in South Wales. We had no luck tracing Blue’s sisters so we gave up on that rather sentimental idea and took Lou on instead, who has been a delight.

Richard’s been meaning for ages to send on some photos of Blue to his (Blue’s) twin brother’s owners. I hope they don’t think we’re a bit odd 🙂 but our guiding thought was that if they sent us photos of their dog we’d be delighted! Richard was inspired by our recent beach photos so at last we’ll be sending some prints on to the Hersham greyhound rescue (who rehomed Sizzler’s Turbo) in the hope that they’ll be kind enough to send them on to South Wales.

Richard’s search for information inevitably led him to the internet. Imagine our surprise, then, when he found one of Blue’s sisters (Cordon Bleu) has re-appeared on greyhound data, available for rehoming! What a challenge to our ‘two is plenty’ policy! I’m sure we’d have been tempted, but amazingly, Blue’s sister aka Amy is in a rehoming centre in Modena in ITALY. We have no idea how she ended up there after being born in Ireland and spending her racing career around the Southeast of England.

Blue's sister - Cordon Bleu

So, we’ve been saved from ourselves yet again. However, Richard couldn’t resist emailing the Italian greyhound rescue to tell them about Blue and link to some of the better photos on the blog. Of course, I couldn’t resist emailing them to make sure that she’s already in Italy (they sometimes hold dogs here and only ship them across when they’re guaranteed a home). The Italians have been on the blog already!  I’ve been teasing Richard that Cordon Bleu has already been put on a flight to Gatwick and is on her way as we speak!

Funnily enough, we’ve not had the same ambition to rehome Lou’s litter-mates though she has a brother and a sister. Maybe it’s because Lou is such one-off! There’s no record of whether her siblings have been rehomed – I can only hope that they’ve found forever homes and are as happy as Lou.

We’re not looking for another greyhound – partly because I’d never get anything done (questionable how much I achieve as it is!), out local vet wouldn’t have the capacity (!), and, most importantly, we’re pretty certain that Lou wouldn’t let anyone else into her cosy pack.

But if we got a call from Gatwick……….

UPDATE:  We know that Amy / Cordon Bleu has been re-homed in Italy, through the rehoming charity we got a link to a video showing her arriving in Rome and is no doubt thoroughly enjoying la Dolce Vita. We have met Blue’s brother Mickey aka Sizzlers Turbo – see https://indigodream.wordpress.com/2009/05/18/dog-blog-weekend-adventures/

Who knows, one day we may be lucky enough to meet the third sibling …