January 2006 Archives

We all met up with the hauler in a McDonald's parking lot on Saturday afternoon, and they unloaded three very smelly, dirty, frightened greyhounds who hadn't gone to the bathroom in who knows how long (since they left Florida). It was kind of strange, it was just like..."Here are the dogs, here are their papers, make sure their collars say "Akron". Ok, thank you." I can't describe it, you just really get the feeling that these dogs aren't treated as living creatures, just thrown away when they're not making money anymore. It's sad. I can't imagine what the people in the McDonald's drive-thru were thinking, seeing three skinny dogs with muzzles on being yanked out of a trailer. I don't mean to make the haul sound bad, without it these dogs would be dead! But if greyhound racing was illegal, none of this would have to go on in the first place.

Anyway...Atrayou is a young goofy boy and is the cutest little wiggly greyhound ever. The difference between Brooke, who lived in a house for a while before she came to us, and Atrayou, who came straight from the track, is amazing! For example, he had no idea what to do when we told him to get in the car. Brooke just hops right in, but Atrayou just stood there like, "Huh?" He doesn't seem to know any commands really. He's very submissive and for the first day, any time you would come near him he would just lay down on the floor in really "submissive positions". I never even thought about there being a submissive way to lay on the floor, but there certainly is. Poor little guy. Aww, it makes me sad thinking about it. He would do these sad little half-lays, where the front part of his body would be laying on its side, but the back half of his body would be in sphinx position. He's doing much better now though and rarely just lays down like that. He doesn't know his name, doesn't come when you tell him to, he doesn't even seem to know what "No!" means!

What else...he's a pig! Some dogs that come off right off the track will not eat kibble because they're used to being fed wet food, so a lot of people end up mixing water in with the kibble. But Atrayou has no problem eating just dry food, which is good because he's lucky to have nice looking teeth and they need to stay that way. He always finishes his food before Brooke and then he walks over to her bowl and tries to eat her food. After they both get a biscuit for "going potty" outside, Atrayou goes over to where Brooke ate hers (she breaks hers up and lets it fall all over the floor, while he eats his in one bite) and licks up all the crumbs. He also paws at the container of food, looks at me, whines, and paws at it some more. Too cute.

Atrayou is also a collector and a chewer. He'll pick up anything and bring it back to his bed and then will usually chew on it. Toys, remote controls, shoes, towels, socks, coasters, whatever! We've been letting him free roam through the house while we're gone because he's terrified of his crate, and because he went on a destruction spree when we gated him in the little hallway that he took in as his "safe spot". I know that can be a sign of separation anxiety, but I really just think he wants to chew, because he'll do the same things right in front of my face. So we'll see. Kory wants to keep him muzzled while we're gone, but boy does he hate that! It must have taken me five minutes to get the stupid thing off of him yesterday. He wouldn't stand still and then when he finally laid down he wouldn't keep his head still, he shook it all over the place like a monster. It also didn't help that his muzzle is old and crappy and the little metal piece that sticks through the hole (like on a watch band) will not bend backwards, so I'd finally get it out of one hole and it would just go into the next one. Ugh, you can probably tell I'm not into muzzling him.

Atrayou and Brooke get along great. Hopefully Brooke will teach him some manners! They do have a lot of fun together though, I've never seen Brooke so happy to be outside! They've been running laps and turning the backyard into a mud pit!

You can see more pictures of Atrayou over on Flickr.

Also, you can see Atrayou's petfinder page here, and for the other two pups that Christine got on Saturday: Whytell Sunstone and Super Tampa.

This is a picture of my Chococat doll. Chococat seems to have had her eye ripped out by someone. I'm not really sure who would have done something like this, but I'm willing to bet that they are also the one who ate one of my chopsticks, destroyed RolyPoly's brush, and thought it would be fun to rip apart a big black garbage bag full of rabbit litter (dirty DIRTY rabbit litter) and spread it all over the living room floor. Hmmm.

It must have been Kory, Brooke is too sweet of a pup to do any of these things.

The pups from Florida (Jefferson County Kennel Club) are going to be here tomorrow, probably around noon or 1:00. Christine finally found out which pups she's getting: Super Tampa, Answerto Atrayou, and Whytell Sunstone. Christine thinks we'll probably foster Answerto Atrayou. All I really know about him is what's on his greyhound-data.com page: he's red brindle, 3 years old, and was not a very good racer! Oh, and his father's name name is Oswald Cobblepot, which I think is hilarious. It reminds me of Chester Copperpot from the Goonies.

Anyway, Christine said I can go meet the hauler with her, so I'm really excited to get a little bit of insight on how everything works.

Biogeography Where animals live, why they live there, and why they don't live in other places. Dr. Grafton teaches this. I had him for embryology and environmental physiology too, he's a good teacher. The class is ok, I think it will get more interesting as time goes on. There isn't a lab for this class which is fantastic.

Ornithology Birds, the most amazing creatures ever. They're going to take over the world. I've been wanting to take this class forever, but this is the first semester it's fit into my schedule. I'm excited about this one. Dr. Grafton teaches this also, and there is a lab which is probably just memorizing species.

Vertebrate Zoology Dr. Orr teaches this. He's really nice, but I heard his tests were really hard. We're studying all vertebrates in Ohio, except birds. I also heard that in lab we have to memorize frog songs and about a million different vert species, including 70+ fish species alone. This class should be interesting, but tough.

Japanese II I have a different instructor this semester, and he's not Japanese! And he's only a grad student! I was worried about this, but I actually think he's a better teacher than my professor last year, who was Japanese. He's certainly a lot more laid back and interesting. There are only 4 people in the class, including me, who didn't have him last semester, so it's very strange. He certainly requires more out of us that my old professor did, so I have a lot of catch up to play. And he's always calling on me in class. Seriously, he called on me to answer questions at least four times yesterday, when there are people in the class that he never calls on at all. I miss the days of just sitting there and not having to worry about that.

Senior Seminar This is some "capstone" course that is required to graduate. There are about 30 of us who have taken a billion classes together already and we all sit in this little tiny room and talk about our futures and current hot topics in biology. Supposedly we're going to learn about grad school, job opportunities, etc....shouldn't we have learned about these things a year ago when we needed to start applying for them? That's my biggest complaint about this school - terrible advising. My vert zoo teacher has shown more interest in what I'm doing after I graduate than my advisor ever has. Anyway, there are some hilarious people in this class, so it should be fun.

Here are some photos of Brooke. The new pup isn't here yet, the transport date has been moved to this coming weekend.

I slipped and fell on some ice my first day of school. I saw a girl a couple feet ahead of me slip a little, and the next thing I knew I was on the ground. It wasn't just a fall-on-your-butt fall, I landed completely horizontal on my left side and smashed my hip and shoulder really good. The whole left side of my body is sore and painful, even my foot, which is messed up again. Not to mention how embarrassing it was! There were about a million other people around, and a lot of them were kids that I had just gotten out of class with. Yay.

This has also made it nearly impossible for me to fall asleep. I can't sleep on my left side, I can't sleep on my right side because I've been having problems with that hip too. Ugh.

On a positive note, my classes seem good so far, I'll try to write something up this weekend about them. Also, the three greyhounds that Rose's Rescue are going to foster should hopefully be here from Florida tomorrow! I know nothing about ours at all, so I'm pretty excited!

Tomorrow is my first day of the semester and I'm not very excited. I have four classes right in a row and I think I might just have to fall asleep. Two of the classes are in the same classroom, which will only encourage sleeping. I'll write about the last five classes of my life after I've been to them at least once.

I think my lips are officially ruined now. I always have the worst dry, chapped, painful lips ever and I also have a terrible habit of biting them. A couple months ago I was determined to get them back into a good condition. I read a million sites about what causes dry lips, and apparently no one really knows. All the sites said different things, so I decided to try three of the most common: don't lick your lips (including biting!), drink lots of water, and use a moisturizer. Well, you can probably tell that it didn't work. There's a huge patch on my lower lip that doesn't even have wrinkles in it, just a smooth, bare spot. I know, I'm gross. I think I must be down to the last layer of skin by now.

Brooke had her first bath yesterday, given by us at least. We hoisted her into the tub and I sprayed her down and washed her while Kory rubbed her ears and reassured her she wasn't going to die. She was actually the calmest dog I've ever seen. It was amazing. Towards the end she was shaking and you could tell she wanted to get out, but now we're she's happy that she is a nice, soft, smell-good pup!

She also had another trip to the vet yesterday because one of the sockets where she had a tooth extracted is still bleeding. Whenever she sleeps she leaves blood-stained drool spots all over the place, and all her toys have dried blood all over them! They look like they've been massacred. Not much happened at the vet, they just gave us some antibiotics to give her. She'll be going back on the 25th though to have more teeth pulled. Poor girly.

Not much else has been going on.

By the way, I've never ever slept during any classes. There are many classes that I wish I could have slept through, but it just seems physically impossible for me. It's hard enough for me to fall asleep at night, let alone in a classroom.

No matter how many times I read that greyhounds are treated well at the tracks, I still can't bring myself to believe it. In 2003, there were 17,414 greyhounds killed. I can't even imagine how many non-greys die in shelters and pounds every year.

I've been reading this thread on greytalk.com, and it's just heartbreaking. To sum it up: A bunch of greyhounds need foster homes or otherwise they're going to be killed to make room for new dogs coming in for the new season. I know this happens all the time, but to read this post and to have something like that right in my face...it's totally different than reading that "greyhounds still die every year." I'm so thankful that we were able to let Brooke into our family. I can't imagine the poor pup being killed after racing, every greyhound deserves a couch to retire on!

Someone on the thread posted that "there's no sense in making a crisis over it, when it happens the other eleven months, just in a smaller, steady stream," but I'm sorry - just because it happens all the time doesn't mean that it's not a big deal.

I really like one of the comments that Brooke's foster mom, Christine, made: "...crisis today or crisis non stop is still crisis to me. Just means that we all need to work harder. Mutts die everyday here in Ohio too...and I am trying to make a difference for them too. The whole country needs to make changes to make it all better. The more advertising we can all do for recycled pets the better. Showing off your pups at Petco, Petsmart or Pet Supplies helps too. Fostering, transporting, donating, organizing...it all makes a difference. We can all only do what we can but we all should try to do as much as we can."

If things work out, Kory and I will be fostering one of these greyhounds through Rose's Rescue. I only wish I could do more. And I wish everyone would stop breeding and buying pets and using animals for entertainment!

Here are some old family photos that I put in the digital section because it was the easiest place to put them. I don't remember who actually has these pictures, but I scanned them in a while ago. For those of you who are not in my family, take note that I am not the cute girl in these photos, that would be my sister. I am the overly chubby baby that looks like a boy! I can't believe they let me crawl around looking like that!

Half of the head of my electric toothbrush fell off. The head is made up of a rectangular set of bristles and a round set of bristles, which is the part that actually spins. Well, the rectangular part fell off, so I was left to brush with just the round rotating part (No, I did not turn it on!). I will definitely be out buying a new brush later today. I don't recommend brushing your teeth if this happens to you because it's quite scary.

I'm not really one to care about my hair at all, but during the winter I blow-dry it for about two minutes so it doesn't freeze outside. This morning when I was finished I pushed the on/off switch into the off position, but it didn't turn off. Instead, it started sparking and going crazy and the handle was glowing. So I dropped it on the floor like a huge baby, unplugged it, and screamed for Kory. I will definitely have to scold my mom for passing down this faulty and dangerous hair dryer to me. She's certainly going to hear about how bad it made the bathroom smell.

Sorry for the poor quality, they're video stills. But today is the first day I've seen Brooke play with anything, and I'm so happy that she's having fun. Yay! At least Brooke is off to a good new year!