Kelsey, E, And Why We Don’t Have Nice Carpet
The “All Puppy, All The Time” Greyhound Kelsey
Depending on how you look at it, one advantage to being the Foster Director for a greyhound adoption group is being able to help out the other foster parents when they’re in a jam. Such an opportunity presented itself a couple of weeks ago when a foster family couldn’t take their foster greyhound with them on vacation. Since it was only expected to be a few days, Erin and I agreed to watch the two year greyhound Kelsey.
Kelsey had a ton of energy, so it was tough to get pictures of her staying still!
More and more of the greyhounds that Prison Greyhounds has been able to bring to Indiana are young. They are in the age range of 18 months to three years and some have little to no racing experience. This creates an interesting situation. Kelsey, like most two year old dogs, is playful with humans and because of her youth, believe to be a good fit with children. However, her age also means she lacks a lot of discipline. So we learned real quickly that she wasn’t familiar with the idea of going to the bathroom outside!
Kelsey was one of the more “helpful” fosters we’ve ever had! Here, she demonstrates how to measure and cut shelf liner.
You don’t foster over fifty greyhounds and have an immaculate house. If you do, we’d love to see it and want to know your secret! But we had decided awhile back that in getting our home ready to sell, the carpet and couches would be the last things we replace so as to give the illusion to others we were clean people with the best behaved dogs in the world. And don’t get us wrong, both the couches and carpet would probably show their age without having been exposed to dozens of greyhound bathroom accidents, spills, stains, and one collapsed ceiling. So although we were frustrated when Kelsey would pee in Erin’s office, the living room, and the hallway. We took solace in the fact that she never went number two in the house.
When she did nap….she preferred to be alone and in the sun.
Because Kelsey had such puppy brain, we would let her outside and she would run around and play, but would forget to relieve herself! We did our best to housebreak her even though the original plan was for her visit to only last a week. But plans change and so did Kelsey’s. Unfortunately, her first foster parents were going to be unable to watch her after their trip. We would’ve gladly continued watching her, except that we were expecting to foster another greyhound. But as she has been able to do on so many occasions, Erin quickly found another family with two younger greyhounds (as opposed to our two geriatric grumpy dogs) that are the perfect fit for Kelsey to exhaust all of that puppy energy. And at the time of this post, it sounds like she’s kept the accidents to a minimum at her new foster home.
Entertaining E
It’s been a while since we’ve had a long term foster and we have COVID to blame for much of that. But it does make us all the more grateful that we get to see E almost every month. It’s strange to think that we’ll be coming up on one year in May that we will have provided almost monthly respite care for him. And it’s interesting how our relationship with him has changed over the course of that year.
Being able to tell the difference between fact and fiction is a big one. Since day one, Erin hasn’t tolerated obvious lies from E. Initially, I was a lot more passive in that I would just ignore the lie, but Erin would not and will not put up with it one bit. And I have to be honest, I’m really happy that she’s taken the stance that she has. For one, I started questioning him more often instead of being so apathetic. And second, it’s working! We believe some of it is him trusting us more, but all I care is that he’s so much more honest with us now than he was even six months ago. Some of his honesty is heartbreaking though. During this last visit, as we presented him with gifts that we hadn’t been able to give him at Christmas, he informed us in a very sincere and upsetting manner that he had been in foster care for exactly one year. In a strange way, maybe that’s why God had us hang on to those Christmas presents for him. Hopefully the Legos, Gravity Falls book, and Beyblades gave him some comfort.
One of our favorite activities to do with E is play board games. He’s really good at Monopoly.
However, some things don’t change. He still wants me to read to him every night before bed. He’s still one of the pickiest eaters we’ve ever met. And trust me, that’s saying something because we babysat Zoe Dill for 13 years and there were times where all we could get that girl to eat was ketchup! E still likes to be physically close to us, whether it’s watching television or playing on his iPad…..he wants to be right next to one of us. He is also still open to new experiences. This last stay we took him duckpin bowling. I had never been before and it had been years since Erin had gone. So we went to the Fountain Square duckpin bowling alley (Homepage – Fountain Square Indy) for the afternoon. Who won you might ask? Lets just say that those that know us best, know that Erin is not competitive and that I’m so competitive that I wouldn’t even consider letting a child win. Sorry, not sorry! What can I say….I used it as a teaching moment?!?!
To be fair, E is super competitive as well and incredibly talented. So he did give me a run for my money!
