Sally

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(The arrival of an "Angel")
Sally is special, even by Greyhound standards. She must be; her trainer told me she had refused to submit to various directives that Sally should be put down. She had not been successful at racing - she was too small and too slow. Despite the fact that the trainer had many Greyhounds, her reply was, "I am not going to let a dog with a nature like hers be put down!"
And so Sally came to us - at two and a half years of age. That was five years ago.
Far from being aggressive with cats, Sally was absolutely terrified of Cyrus, our very stupid Chinchilla. She wouldn't even look at him or go near him - much less walk past him. It took about two weeks for her to do that - and only then, if she were staring deliberately at the ceiling, whilst so doing. However, she soon learned that he posed no threat. Now they lie together by the bedroom window, snoozing.
Her initial timidity was not helped by the fact that, three weeks after we got her, she was attacked by a Rottweiler. Unlike Sally, that dog was neither leashed nor muzzled - funny that? But despite that bad start she has grown in confidence over the years and is no longer scared of dogs she hasn't met before.
In fact, Sally has garnered quite a "fan club" in our local park. Other dog owners adore her. Some of them even admonish their own poor dogs with, "Why can't you be like Sally?" She walks beautifully, never pulls, is calm and completely lacking in aggression. And she loves people. She really prefers to "talk" to the human on the other end of the lead, rather than her doggy friends.
Everyone who enters the house, whether known to her or not, is greeted like a long-lost friend and given the most ecstatic welcome. So I am afraid, like most Greyhounds, she is no guard dog! A stranger is just a friend she has never met before.
And the title "Angel"? That was bestowed on her by someone who was well qualified to judge, the very lovely Jodie O'Shea, from Aussie Pooch, who was very sadly lost to us as a result of Bali. Vale Jodie, Sally misses you, as do we all.

Angela