Hanging with Greyhounds

I volunteered to take some pictures for Southern Arizona Greyhound Adoption during the Oro Valley Festival of Arts.

We learned all kinds of things about greyhounds!

For example, I had no idea that racing greyhounds' ears are tattooed.

This girl's ear is tattooed "37C". That means she was born in March 2007 and the "C" means she was the third of the litter to be tattooed.

The other ear has a tattoo of her ID number.

I've been taking photos of dogs for months and I always get them to sit. I was told that greyhounds really can't sit. They can kind of get into that position, but their butt never touches the ground. They're better at lying down.

Also, when a greyhound is hurt during training, he/she is automatically retired. Sometimes they're given to greyhound rescue, sometimes they are abandoned in the desert and sometimes they are "disposed of" in other ways.

Some dogs don't even like to race. If they are more apt to run up into the stands for a hotdog, they are retired as well.

I was also told that once they're retired, they're big ol' couch potatoes.

These are beautiful dogs and they were very welcoming to everyone that stopped by. What else was interesting was that there was no barking. Every owner there had a story about how their greyhound rarely barked.

It was a really windy day but otherwise it was beautiful. The sun, the dogs and all the nice people I met made it great!