Greyhound Love, the Sequel

The departure of our dog left a void in our lives, but at the same time I appreciated having a break from the daily responsibilities of feeding, walking, and other assorted pet-parenting. The Mrs. was ready for another dog about two weeks after we said goodbye to London, but I insisted on taking some time for ourselves.

After about three months I felt I was ready. During that period we were able to go to New York for a long weekend without needing to worry about who would look after our dog, and how much that would cost on top of the hotel and other related expenses.

It was a pretty easy decision for us to look for another greyhound. The breed's post-retirement temperament meshes well with our own, and we knew all the specifics of caring for one. The greyhound adoption group that we had dealt with no longer operates in New England, so we started looking around online.

We visited a facility where dogs fresh from the track were kenneled and available for adoption. We found that the dogs there were so excited to go outside and walk around on the grounds that they were not especially interested in us, and we decided that we needed to find another adoption group that fosters the dogs in home settings before matching them with adopters.

Some deeper searching led us to Greyhound Options, which is based out in the middle-western part of Massachusetts but has foster dogs available in greater Boston. We were visited by a volunteer who lives in our city, and our original plan was to drive out to a facility to meet a fresh batch of dogs as they were released from vet quarantine. But the Mrs. wasn't feeling well that week, and we decided that two-plus hours of driving each way wasn't the best idea at the time.

A dog that was being fostered at that location was transferred to this area, and the group suggested we might want to meet her. They even offered to bring her to the volunteer's house so we wouldn't have to travel as far, and so on a Friday evening at the beginning of June we went to meet her. We were immediately charmed by "Jordy," who is almost entirely black with a brown undertone, and a white patch on her chest that turns to pink on her stomach; her back paws and the tip or her tail are also white. She turned four at the end of April.

We agreed to move forward with the adoption, but that name... it wouldn't do. She hadn't been called by it for very long, so it would be relatively easy to change it. My thinking was that something that sounded kind of similar would make for a smoother transition. We tried over a hundred potential names, ones that did and didn't sound like Jordy, and found nothing that we felt was a better fit than "Charlie."

Charlie became part of our "pack" just over three months ago. She was brought to our house on a Monday evening in June, and it took about 45 minutes after the adoption group people left for her to climb up on the couch and make herself at home. Getting to know her has been highly amusing. She's very different from London, quite a bit more doglike in many ways. Even so, she has fit right into our household and our lives, and now we couldn't imagine our life without her.