Race ya!!!

You can't share your life with a bunch of greyhounds and not, at some point, have some pretty good stories. Sometimes they're touching. Sometimes they're hysterical, but sometimes the magic of these creatures will leave you breathless. This story is from a time last year when I only had two of them. They were still getting used to each other, and it was the first time I ever saw them actually interact in the manner to which they were born. It still gives me goosebumples.

Moses is my big male, and Lilo is our little female. Before that night, I honestly believed that I had seen Moses run. Really run. Then I watched the tapes of his races and wondered if I had, in fact, actually seen the boy at full bore. Somehow I doubted it. On this particular night, we took Lilo, who was brand spanky new to our house and dealing with a bunch of issues of her own, most of which caused her to pee on the floor and eat tables, with us to the ball field for our weekly play date. Lilo, having been off the track for a much shorter time than Moses, was ready to roll and as soon as I let them off lead, she started trotting with Moses down the first base line all the way to the outfield fence. The further along the baseline they went, the more they were messing with each other, bumping, pushing, egging each other on like a couple of kids. It was so obvious what was happening that it was funny: They were trying to psych each other out on the way to the starting line. It was amazing. It got a lot more amazing real soon.

Those two got to the outfield fence and suddenly, Lilo zigged left and was off and running like she’d been shot out of a cannon. In the blink of an eye, Moses was off as well. It’s one thing to see them break from a dead stop to a flat out sprint on tape. It’s another thing entirely to see it happen right before your very eyes. 0 to 45 in under 6 strides has a way of humbling you. And yes, that's 0 to 45 mph. Being much smaller and lighter, Lilo quickly got about 9 lengths out on him in no time flat, but if you watched Moses, you could see an incredible thing happening. You could see him literally flitting through the gears: peeling rubber off the start, getting his bearings, and then snap shifting into higher gears, effortlessly, one after the other. And he was catching her. Stride by stride he was catching her. When Lilo felt him coming on, she snapped it into a higher gear, and back and forth it went until mere seconds later, Moses was with her and I was on my ass because my legs had simply turned to noodles.

They messed around like this for about 15 minutes or so (or until Moses keeled over and gave up and all the doggy “come ON is that all you got” in the world couldn’t convince him to do more than trot). I’ve never seen two happier dogs in all my life. Smiles lighting up their faces, ears pinned back and doggy lips and tongues flapping everywhere. Once Moses quit, Lilo started messing with my little girl, letting her run away from her and get about ¾ of the way across the ball field, and then blazing off to catch her at the fence. All you could hear in the dead silence of the early evening was Lilo’s pounding paws and my little girl’s giggling. I don’t think I’ll ever forget the first time I really saw my hounds do what they were born to do: cut the air like a hot knife. Put Animal Planet to shame.