Are You Sitting Down

By Nancy E. Dunne and Janet Shaffer

Are You Sitting Down tells the story of the Follow That Hound program from the voices of the adopters who have opened their hearts and homes to former racing greyhounds. When Bill and Cathie Lambert started FTH, the main focus was to ensure a network of caring and capable homes for the greyhounds they bred and raced. These adopters would watch their puppy grow and race, and anxiously await the day when the coveted "Are You Sitting Down Your racer is ready to come home!!" email would arrive. What happened was the forging of a family, first through words on an online message board and progressing to yearly reunions and lifelong friendships. This is their story, as told by them. Welcome to Follow That Hound.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lulu.com
• Release date: Apr 6, 2011
• ISBN: 9781447612421

Book preview

Bernard

Rhondonite Puppies

e9781447612421_i0003.jpg

Even though Follow That Hound started as a concept when Chris Grieb asked about Lets Play Fair, the first litter to be named with the FTH prefix was Rhodonite’s by Whistler’s Ike. We asked some of the adopters to tell us about their experiences, including the very first FTH dog to go home, Troublina.

e9781447612421_i0004.jpg

FTH Ikes Trouble

By Jennifer Kunkel

I never planned on having a third dog in the house. But something struck a chord when I saw her name on Greytalk. Trouble. FTH Ikes Trouble—she was done racing and needed a home. I raised my hand to say I was interested. Just from a name, since I was thought of always being in trouble did this wonderful girl come to find me. This was in February 2005. On a cold snowy night, I nervously awaited a call from THE Cathie Lambert for my phone interview. When she called, I was walking Tigger and Cinder in the park across the street. We went over how the dogs are treated which is like king and queen. How long they were left alone, our routine, and the worst—what if she didn’t fit in. I remember the moment when I told her—Well of course they have a heated blanket in the winter, how can you expect them to lay down on just a bed? That I know now, was the clincher. I learned about Trouble’s hard life with her health. Almost dying as a puppy with still no diagnosis. Trouble hadn’t eaten in about a week, and had dropped her off at the vet. They hadn’t done anything all day with her, so Cathie went to pick her at lunch and brought her back to her desk at work. Teeny tiny sick baby girl wasn’t getting any better, so essentially, Cathie had gone to bring her home to die. She slept in bed with Cathie and Bill, when Trouble woke them up. By some miracle, she seemed a bit better. Day by day she started to eat and drink and was out of the woods. She went to Oklahoma to train with her litter only to catch an extremely bad case of kennel cough. Yet again, they didn’t think she’d make it. Well, she made it back to Jacksonville and managed to run thirteen races with her maiden being her only win. We talked about when I could bring her home, and the next haul wasn’t until late March, early April. Well then Cinder got sick, and I knew the timing was off. So we had to wait a couple of weeks to bring her home. April 13th at 11pm she came off the hauler. I was so nervous! I didn’t know what to expect; either a dog covered in pee and poop or clean. I was prepared with a can of beer, wet and dry towels, and her new collar with a blinky thing on it so I could see her and her new tags. She came off the hauler squeaky princess clean. Kerri was there to take pictures of the whole event. We soon packed up and headed home which was another 2 hour drive for Trouble.

We arrived home, and I leashed up Tigger and Cinder and we all walked to the park to pee and poop together. Everything went great! She settled right in and never a whimper came out of her. The next few days were interesting. She wanted to play, play, play with Cinder and Cinder was having none of it. But that didn’t stop Trouble. She just has a blast with everything in life. She learned so much from Tigger and Cinder, mostly on not running off when off leash! A few months went by and with the loss of both Tigger and Cinder, Troublina became my rock, my life, and my princess. She will never do any wrong!

We went to our first Sandy Paws to meet Cathie face to face. Trouble just about came out of her skin. It was really nice to be able to put how well she was treated with a face. Things didn’t get any easier up in New Hampshire, so we found ourselves moving to Jacksonville! Its been a wonderful experience being here. I know it’s hard on both myself and Cathie to see how white her face is getting. She’ll be six this month. She is the most special girl ever. I’m so thankful we have each other. She really is my best friend and I don’t know what I’d do without her.

e9781447612421_i0005.jpg

FTH Ike’sThunder & FTH Ike’s Rampage

by The Firestone Family

Our earliest memories of Follow That Hound were when David had been a relatively new member of Grey Talk and he heard of a new program that was starting where you would be able to follow the life of a greyhound from birth and be able to watch them grow into great athletes and then bring them home when their career is done.

We did not have the opportunity to meet MollyGator before she came home. She was not pre-adopted and eventually she was placed in another home. She was placed there the week before Greyhounds in Gettysburg in 2006 She was returned to our adoption group 3 days later due to issues with the adopter. We were contacted just a few days for as a last minute foster since many of the foster families were volunteering at GIG or already had fosters.

We were only planning to foster MollyGator. We had made arrangements to pick her up at GIG and keep her until she was placed. So that Saturday morning we drove to Gettysburg with Phantom and the kids. We walked around until it was time to meet her. While we were looking for add a second pup, we did not necessary think she was the one. We had just finished fostering Izzy our 1st foster and while she was a great pup she wasn’t the one for us, at least that is what Phantom kindly informed us in his own special way.

We walked to our greyhound group’s vendor stand so we could meet this brindle girl. I walked up to MollyGator and she immediately started to nuzzle me and I knew she wasn’t going to be a foster—she was staying. Of course, we still needed Phantom’s approval. We spent some time walking around GIG—we had to do our shopping, of course! We had an uneventful drive home and settled in for the night. Later when David has posted on Grey Talk about our foster, we were contacted by Cathie and learned more about FTH.

When our group’s adoption coordinator called the next day to see how the foster girl was, we said she was settling in fine and that she shouldn’t look too hard for a placement for her. A week later we told the group to get the paperwork ready so we could make it official and we became part of a wonderful family, known as Follow That Hound.

From early on, Ian has adopted MollyGator as his babygirl. She will let him snuggle with her and even take care of her boy. Those two have a special relationship that makes her his heart dog.

As a result of being a part of FTH, we started to follow her brother’s races. Pokie was such a BIG brindle and we have developed quite a fondness for the FTH pups. David and I had many discussions about adding a third greyhound—we had to weigh all the positives and negatives. It should come as no surprise that we decided to put in our application to pre-adopt Pokie—who could resist an FTH pup! We continued to watch Pokie race and we knew one day we’d get that email.

A few months later we went to Sandy Paws and then on Jacksonville in March of 2007 we finally met all the wonderful people and their greyhounds who we had been chatting with online. The people we were most anxious to meet was the Lamberts, especially Mama Caffie. Of course, we were also very excited to meet Pokie for the very first time. Madison was so excited about pre-adopting him that she wrote him a letter.