Sym: The Beginning of the Posse

Of course we couldn’t just stop at two dogs.

No, no, no!

My wife, Julie, had always wanted a Greyhound.

So we discussed it ...many times ... mulling over the pro’s and con’s of an extended doggy side of the family until one day ... and I’m still not quite sure how it happened ... Nippa, a beautiful and gentle brindle Greyhound girl became the third canine member of our ‘posse’.

She immediately settled and bonded with Sym but was wary of Sox who, in her own bossy way, let it be known with the occasional bark that she was in charge.

Sym and Nippa became great friends and often played the 'come with me' game in the living room.
It was a simple game that Sym devised and it usually involved waking up Nippa from her slumbers as
he would wander up to her, take her collar in his mouth and try to drag her outside. Nippa never complained and quite often she reached the back door in a lying position before giving in to Sym's demands.

We had been warned not to let Nippa off the lead in the park until she was used to her surroundings but due to her bond with Sym and natural desire to run, we ignored this and let her run to her hearts delight. Sym would storm off after his ball and Nippa would thunder after him, scaring the living daylights out of him as bounded past.

She was quick!

Sym had to abandon his sheep dog hate of straight lines and adopt a more direct approach in order to keep up. As Nippa took off in a wide arcing run, Sym would make a few mental calculations and take then take off in a straight line intercept course.

They both loved to run and they both loved running with each other.

For almost a year all three dogs lived and played in perfect harmony but that was all about to end.

As Nippa stepped passed Sox, as she had done a thousand times before, Sox decided that she was to close and was invading her space.

She delivered a warning bark and lunge from a lying position to which Nippa reacted.

It was a short but violent tussle which I was able breakup quickly, but lines had been drawn and blood had been spilled.

Sox received a bite to the chest which Nippa, true to her Greyhound instincts, shook violently. It resulted in a deep wound that required several stitches and cost several hundred pounds in vet bills. But it also caused something even worse; it created a dominance issue between the two dogs that we could not break.

Nippa would take every opportunity to let Sox know that she was the weaker dog. They could no longer be left alone as Nippa would often deliberately approach Sox in a challenging manner, forcing her away from food or from her sleeping place of choice.

We had all grown to love Nippa, but Sox had to be protected from further harm (mostly, it has to be said, from her own stupidity).

It was a hard decision and it broke our hearts, but Nippa was returned to The Greyhound Rescue organisation from which we adopted her. They assured us that they would place her in a good home.

The house seemed empty without her. Walks in the park were not the same without the sound of her thundering over the fields.

Thankfully, after only a few short weeks, we were informed that Nippa had been re-homed with a Greyhound loving family in England.

She was enjoying life with a new Greyhound ‘brother’!

Nippa, despite only having been with us for a year, was sorely missed and she is still spoken off fondly and considered to be a member of our family.