It was a difficult search; one breed would be lonely in our two-income home, another needed too much attention and exercise, a third wasn’t great around young children. And then one day she saw an article in the paper about a greyhound rescue group—Amazing Greys. When she researched greyhounds and saw descriptions like “similar to a large cat” (my wife had grown up a cat person) it caught her interest. But when she saw “short bursts of energy followed by long periods of inactivity” that was the clincher—it sounded like one of us!
Misty entered our lives in the fall of 1999. Still used to her life on the track, she came to us a little lethargic and timid. She would retreat to her crate at the smallest provocation, and needed to be taught to climb our stairs. But before long she had created her own little track in our backyard, which she would race around with reckless abandon when let out—for a minute or two—before collapsing back on her bed for a well earned rest.
My oldest son overcame his fear of dogs thanks to Misty. My wife has fond memories of taking the dog for walks, and the talks she shared with our sons, when they were young boys. We all remember the time we took her along to a friend’s barbecue, not realizing that they kept a pet rabbit in a cage in their back yard—Misty had no idea what to make of that, and never went more than ten feet away from the cage!
We also remember the time she was sleeping in front of the TV when a greyhound race actually came on the screen…the announcer’s call of “Heeeeeeeeere’s Sparky!” and the distinctive metal on metal scraping sound made by the mechanical rabbit had Misty wide awake and ready to resume her professional career—although an online review of her less than stellar record showed that she had tended to be “wide on the turns” and never came in higher than fifth in the eight races she ran…but the track’s loss was our gain.
Now both of our boys have gone off to college. Misty stopped running around the back yard a while ago, although she could still pull off a brief sprint when our local tree squirrel was trying to raid the bird feeder or taunted her from the back fence. She stopped sleeping in our bedroom about a month ago, when those stairs that my wife taught her to climb became a bit too much to handle.
On January 4, when both our boys were home and my parents were visiting, Misty said her final goodbyes and passed away quietly at home. We still look for her when we come home from work or an errand, we still think of her when we go by the dog food section in the store, and I still find myself checking the back door to see if she wants to come in…but then I realize that she’s young again, happily chasing rabbits and squirrels, and she’ll never have to worry about being “wide on the turns” again. We’ll miss her.