Quote:
Originally Posted by Solumina
They have bursts of energy, as long as you take them somewhere that they can run
and a lot of them are more like cats than dogs.
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They're also very rarely destructive around the house or anything, except when they've for whatever reason had a shortened run (when they can be right buggers). Much easier than collies and poodles and calmer than terriers and bijons.
From the greyhounds I've known in 5 years of pet-related work, they seem gentle and intelligent and they're not stubborn like bassets and scent-hounds, which is a definite bonus! Also, they're not snappy and cantankerous like whippets.
The only times people really seem to have problems with them is in situations with kids, because they're not usually very good with busy and noisy environments, and being manhandled by scrotey kids is enough to rub anyone up the wrong way :P
That and if they've got a strong hunting instinct they sometimes go for cats and small dogs, though it's reasonably unusual. Which also means that letting them off the lead can be a bit dodgy because the one moment a greyhound is going to ignore your commands is when the prey instinct takes over.
With ex-racers they're usually crate-trained so they are quite happy doing nothing for long stretches, which works quite well if you need to leave them, and means they won't chew your house/apartment to pieces whilst you're out, and as Solumina says they're quite happy with one big run a day, and then just lounging around for the rest of it.
If you get an adult dog, I'd start with joint-care tablets pretty much straight away, cause they can get VERY stiff in old age, and using the tablets pre-emptively works much better than waiting for the problem to manifest. Decent tablets will have Glucosamine, Chondroitin and MSM, and the really really decent ones have green-lipped mussel extract, which if you can find it, is definitely the most potent way to do it
