Awaiting Siesta's Arrival

I decided to write a blog about Siesta, our snoozing greyhound, for several reasons.
1. Siesta is our first dog so we are bound to make mistakes and learn great tricks for other dog lovers.
2. Siesta is a retired racing greyhound who is still learning about life off the track, so she is bound to make some adorable blunders herself.
3. I am a long way from home, friends, and family on the west coast so I thought this would be a way for them to meet our new dog and keep in touch with me.

So, here I am at work on a Friday afternoon waiting for a call from Lindsay, Siesta's foster mom, saying she is coming to drop Siesta off. As soon as I get the call, off I will race home - or rather I will walk a block in the rain to the shuttle stop and then nervously ride the bus around New Haven waiting to be dropped off at the end of my street. Once she arrives, the official adoption paper work has to be signed and then ... she's ours!

But let me back track a little and explain why we're adopting Siesta. Of course there are the obvious reasons someone adopts a dog, they love dogs, want companionship, an exercise partner, etc. Which are all true for us. Also, Ty works long hours in grad school so Siesta is going to be my couch buddy in the evening. To be truthful, this adoption has been a long time coming. I have sort of been obsessed with greyhounds since we moved to the east coast 4 years ago and started meeting people with greyhounds everywhere. Greyhounds all seemed to be so sweet, quiet, gentle, and completely adorable. On top of all that they have a rough start to life on the track and adopting a greyhound means giving them a life of leisure that all dogs should enjoy. So when we finally decided the time was right to adopt a dog, and a small dog was out of the question for Ty, a greyhound was the obvious choice.

So I submitted an application to We Adopt Greyhounds (WAG) here in Connecticut. That evening they responded to my application with a phone interview. It was nothing too grueling, but they still wanted to set up a in-home meeting for the following week. Lindsay was the foster mom they put me in touch with and she arranged for another foster mom and both of their foster dogs to visit us in our apartment. So I scrambled to get the place as dog-friendly as possible for their visit. Ty and I were incredibly excited. When Lindsay and Chris arrived with Celesta (now called Siesta) and Sooner (a male dog - 18 months old) they had to teach Sooner to climb the stairs cause he'd never seen stairs before since he was fresh off the track. As it turned out "Celesta" had been off the track for some time since she broke her rear right leg in a race. She had it reset by a canine surgical orthopedist in Boston and had fully recuperated in foster care. So she had a little more experience in a home than Sooner. The more we learned from the two foster moms about the dogs the more it became clear that "Celesta" was the right dog for us.

During a second home visit we introduced Siesta to our friends' puppy and 2 cats to test her "prey instincts." She seemed to pass those tests so we finalized our choice with Lindsay. For the past 2 weeks we were on a previously arranged vacation to California to visit family. That's where we decided that her racing name, "Celesta", didn't quite work for us and I thought that Siesta was a clever, better sounding name that she might still respond to. Greyhounds are ofter referred to as 40 mile and hour couch potatoes because they are big fans of napping. So the name seemed to make sense. Since we got back from vacation I have been running around buying doggy gear, treats, a bed, and toys.

So, all there is left to do now is wait for her to arrive...