Legislation to ban the greyhound racing industry in NSW from July next year is due to be tabled in State Parliament on August 2. The ACT government has also moved to ban the sport. Moreover, according to a recent report by Clive Stern, SC, it’s probable that 99 greyhounds were brutally killed at a Hunter Valley property and buried in a mass grave over a four-year period because they were “underperforming” and “therefore of no further use”. The following story of Luca the greyhound offers insight – and hope.
She is home, poncing around the neighbourhood like she’s the queen of paradise and the streets are lined with gold, grinning and swinging her hips, piddling outside Mick and Michael’s butcher shop before they open to let them know she’s back. It’s a sniffathon.
Two weeks away, while her person went on a holiday, and although she’s been loved up and cuddled and fussed over by our extended family, it’s Redfern and me she loves beyond all else. We saved her. She’s a dog I really, really didn’t want.
Six years ago I spotted her tied up in a thunderstorm, shaking while her owner was in the corner shop. Beyond the fear of the storm was a very frightened animal. A few nights later, a balmy, starry night I saw her again tied up at the same spot, knelt beside her, put my hand on her back and talked to her. The whites of her eyes were bloodshot, she felt too hot.
I’ve had a dog under my arm since I was little, grew up with a man that worked at Harold Park, a woman who spent her days at the kitchen table with the form guide, the tranny and a pack of Rothmans. Our next-door neighbour had greyhounds in cages in the backyard, and I used to hang over the fence and talk to them. They’d all be out walking early, in their own way these dogs were the backyard trainer’s pride and joy. Dogs would appear and disappear back then, an interchange of colours and markings. You never saw an old one.
My beloved Whippet had died the year before after a long and precious friendship, my family were grown enough not to need me all the time. Thirty odd years straight of caring for others. I was recovering from back surgery and had filled my place with Lonely Planet guides. I was saving. Sayonara.
The next day the owner of the greyhound came up to me, held out her lead and said “Do you want her. She’s no good.” I was horrified, said, “Uhh no, not really”. The rest of the conversation – me suggesting that he just keep her as a pet, him looking at me like I was speaking a different language. Walking home, the full realisation. She wasn’t the first greyhound on the street to appear then disappear. She knew what was about to happen. I’d already seen it in her eyes.
Get home. Fuck.
Face to face with myself.
How hard can it be to rehome her, I thought. I wasn’t on my way immediately, could do this for her. As I discovered, it was very, very hard to find a greyhound a home. There are tens of thousands who are bred for the track and disposed of. As pups. As failed racers. As injured racers. As fodder for the industry and for their blood. Who dreamt this up?
She didn’t have a name. When I saw the guy the next day and asked him what her name was, he thought about it for a few beats too long, said, “Sandra”. Yeah, no. A few minutes later a little boy said to me, “What’s her name?” “Luca,” I said, without thinking.
As if that was who she was. As if she was meant to find me, so I could say it for her.
Her first place was under my bed and for six months that was where she stayed more or less. She had post-traumatic stress disorder. Her memory bank had no love or affection. Her response to everything outside my flat was fear, or a strange, stoic paralysis. She balked at going to the park, bouncing balls, children (too many random movements), climbing steps freaked her right out, a flapping plastic bag. She seemed particularly distressed by loud bangs. Gunshot I thought. She had irritable bowel syndrome, had been treated with drugs to stop her coming into heat and to bulk her up, she had blood in her poo. She didn’t know how to wag her tail. If I attempted to cuddle her or draw her out from under the bed to play with the grandchildren she didn’t know what to do, how to be, so she taught me just to let her be.
The first sign of her rehabilitation. She woke up one morning, looked at me like I wasn’t a stranger anymore, banged my mattress with her considerable hips, went out to the kitchen, did a downward dog, sat and waited for me to get up and take her out. She is hip high so when we were waiting for the lift I used to swing my hips softly against her, just contact, a bit of a physical sing-song. A month in she suddenly nudged me back. A very tentative, but most sincere acknowledgement. Not long after that she wagged her tail.
For the next few months, whenever anyone stopped to admire her, I’d say she’s looking for a home, point out all the qualities that make the greyhound such a great companion animal. How clean, how quiet, how docile, how sweet, how well suited to living in units, how so not interested in tearing around.
As it turned out circumstances, not the dog, forced me to stay, and without an alternative, over time Luca became mine. It’s just as well she was here. That time would have been too brittle without her. I might have broken.
I realised I loved her when I called her “Dog”. A word I had been resisting using. It was my whippet’s name. Not his real name. But his real name. They leave us breathless with sorrow when they die, something I was trying very hard to avoid when I first met her.
The life I have lived since she arrived is very different than the one I had intended. But it’s the one she gave me. In retrospect I have to admit her plan was better. I recommend everyone goes out and saves a greyhound. You just might save yourself.
To the locals who have watched her rehabilitation, she is most obviously happy, this is her gift now to those with whom she connects. She doesn’t hoard her happiness. She gives it out again.
To anyone who is unhappy, at a loose end, or lives in a shoebox. Rescue a greyhound. Unlike a puppy, they are toilet-trained, quiet, a magnificent body for a tired head to lean on, keep you alert to the life you are leading, will be the best flatmate you’ve ever had. Like all damaged souls they need time to recover. Time, consistent kindness, peace. A run for the sheer joy of it. Pure poetry.
For real families with real time constraints the greyhound is for you. They are perfectly happy spending all day on the couch at home. Like all breeds there are alpha dogs who will always have a dominant personality or dogs that have been so damaged by their experiences they will need a very particular environment. They are sight hounds so they will chase, but even the avid chasers can be rehabilitated to the point of hanging out with the family cat. For the ones that can’t there are plenty of cat-allergic humans.
So if you intend 2017 to be your year of the new dog, there is a greyhound that needs a home. Soon. They are dying by the truckload.
