Jess's First Christmas

Today is Christmas day and it is also Jess's first Christmas day with our family. So I took her under my wing and showed her the ropes. I am a bit of a veteran with this Christmas thing now. Mind you my first year with my family at Christmas ended up with me in hospital as I ate too much... but that it another story!

Christmas seems to be all about eating and lazing around, something we hounds are good at! But there is something different about Christmas day, pressents! Both Jess and I got presents. I find ripping paper and extracting the gift inside easy, Jess has still to learn the fine art of avarice and greed! But she is getting there.

Once my family sat down to share their presents, it was our turn to remind them that the focus of attention should be us at all times. Therefore, Jess and I strategically arranged ourselves to ensure that we were both appropriately in the way at all times. You can see our day in the images below.

Christmas Eve run

It was hot today, summer finally seems to have arrived and so what do my family do? They decide that what Jess and I really want to do is have a run. Not just one run, but several. The other morning one of my family got up nice and early and took us out for our regular walk, but this time he just took us to the reserve behind our home and let us go, with muzzles on.

So in the cool of the morning, we went! In no time at all Jess was eating my dust and we were a mere speck in the distance to our owner. He started to have palpitations, but we were just playing with him! We hooned off to the end of the field, right down by the skate park and near to the road. Once there we wandered around a bit and then decided to blast back to him. (He still thinks that he has recall sorted with us....!) It was great to run again. Jess is so slow! She keeps going on about all the races that she won, the prize money she earned and rubbing it in about how that is the exact opposite of my racing career! But as Keith my trainer said, there is no one faster on grass than me! And Jess has still yet to overtake me...

So today is Christmas Eve and for our afternoon walk we were allowed to run again, but this time no cool of the morning, it was hot! Mind you, I am pretty hot so I blasted off again and Jess, yet again, was literally eating my dust as the field we run in has just been sanded this week for drainage and I was flicking the sand up as I ran. In no time flat we were at the end of the field, as far away as we could get from our family, without straying onto the road.

Once again I could hear the call to return, but I decided to walk back, it was too hot and Jess decided to blast back. She is now counting this as a victory, she claims the sand sapped my speed. Yeah, Yeah Delilah! I know however that I simply decided that it was too hot and walking was a better option.... That is my story and I am sticking to it!

Merry Christmas everyone

Animates Sylvia Park Grand Opening

It has been a while since I have done any dictation for my family to write up on our behalf. We seem to have dropped off of the GAP radar. Apparently the GAP Facebook pages are quite active, but as my family use Facebook for business, they are reluctant to mix business and pleasure on that particular forum so are missing out. Anyway, we heard through the e-mail chain that Animates at Sylvia Park were having a big opening and that us hounds would be most welcome to be ambassadors for pet ownership through adoption.

At 10:00 this morning our family bundled Jess and I into the car, we love going out exploring. The car always takes us to great places, with the exception of the vets and the kennels, but we can never really tell when that is going to happen, so we get excited anyway! Off we went to Animates at Sylvia Park for their grand opening weekend.

When we got there the place was awash with hounds we had not met before, with the exception of Reba and Hoss, who we know of old. Jess has taken a while to settle into meeting new dogs and often finds meeting new dogs, even hounds, stressful and will growl to encourage others to keep away. As for me, I love the attention and just lap it up, I take as much as I can get from all the willing hands that want to pat me and I just love meeting new dogs of every variety.

Apart from the attention, the best bit today was the furry creatures. I found the mice and best of all I found the rabbits! I really wanted to play with those guys, but for some reason, my family seemed really reluctant to let me do so! I kept pointing them out and I kept pulling them towards what I wanted to play with, but no dice, the nearest I got to playing with my buddies can be seen in the slideshow below. Ah well maybe next time they will let me play with the rabbits? Strangely, Jess and the other hounds showed little or no interest in the rabbits. Not sure why!

PetExpo - 2011

Today my family took Jess and I out. We were up early and went for a walk on the beach at St Heliers, I am not a great fan of the beach, too much sand, but my family make me walk on it as it cleans up my paws a real treat! Jess loves the beach, she just trots along looking around at all the sights and sounds of the beach. Last time we were at the beach in St Heliers we met another hound but she was not there today.

Anyway after breakfast and a short rest, we were off in the car again, this time we went to the Pet Expo over at the North Shore Events Centre. The place was packed, and just like the great Led Zepplin album, we went in through the out door. Once in side we were both assaulted by the sights, sounds and smells of the expo. There were pets of all sizes and their owners everyhwere!

We did a three hour stint on the GAP stand. We hussled hard to encourage others to adopt our brothers and sisters in the kennels. It was stimulation overload. Jess was not so keen on all the attention and kept hiding, but after a while she decided to give it a go and cheered up. I, however was in my element, seeking out every face to lick and every hand to be patted, stroked and scratched with. After a while though, even I had to have a lie down. But I made sure I had a nice lap to lie on when I did!

You can see some images of us that attended today below. There were some new hounds that we had not met before and others who we had. Some of the names that I remember from today were: Lily, Eddie, Kylie, Bella, Gizmo.

Stan and Jess run together

This weekend marks the official residence for Jess. My family invited the Auckland dog ranger round to assess whether our section is good enough for us, we passed and now Jess has an Auckland City dog tag and the ranger took away her Manawatu licence.

The weekend got even better when my family got us up early today and took us out for our usual morning walk. But this time, for the first time in ages, they brought along our muzzles. Jess and I have never run together before, in fact my family have never let Jess off the lead when we are out. But today was different, today we went to the Crossfield Reserve and there was no one on it and we ran! It was misty and empty. I was allowed to run first, it was great to be let off the leash and run free again. Then the family let Jess go, she was not really sure what to do and bounded off like a bunny rabbit! She did put on a little burst of speed, but I am sure if we had been running together, I would have won!

This afternoon we went out again, this time to Churchill Park and again with muzzles. Our family took us to a section of the park where we could again be off lead. This time however, we had to do recall, which we did really well and the family also took some images of us running too. Finally Jess and I ran together and I still beat her!

You can check out the images of us running at Churchill Park below. It was such great fun, we hope to go back there again regularly. Several other dog walkers stopped us as we were returning to the car as they love us Greyhounds and were bitterly disappointed that they did not see us running. Next time, we told them!

Stan and Jess TV

I have ironed out the wrinkles and the Hound Cam will be live from 7:30 AM NZDT Tuesday 16 May. It is running now just to test the power settings on the host computer. So what do Hounds get up to when they are left alone. I think that a parlour game will be counting how many of those sofas, will be slept on whilst we are not in the house.... The channel for Stan and Jess is here and the link to the embedded player in an earlier post is here.

GAP - Nosh Metro

It was not a GAP run yesterday, but a meeting outside Nosh Metro on Ponsonby Road. Jess and I were taken there by the family and we all stood around looking great and spreading the word to encourage people to stop and then think about adopting more of our friends. The stopping strategy was easy, we occupied a corner, outside one of the entrances to Nosh. The then occupied both sides of the footpath. The only escape was either to duck into the Nosh store, which would have made the manager happy, walk into the busy Ponsonby Road, not very safe or run the gauntlet of us and be forced to love us!

So what happened? Well people and other dogs ran our gauntlet! Only one owner of a small white fluffy thing, sort of a feather duster with legs, elected to pick up his furball and walk through us. The rest were all happy to stop, pet us and be informed about us. Lots of people were happy to make cash donations to the cause. To all of you who donated, thanks a lot.

As usual it was great to reacquaint myself and to introduce Jess to some of my old mates. Here is the roll call of who was there before we left: Riley, Mouse, Puni, Nicky, Jenny, Molly and Otis.

Below are some images of us.

Stan and Jess - broadcasting live

Stan and Jess have their own TV channel on http://ustream.tv We want to see what our hounds get up to when we are not home. Do they play, do they sleep together, apart etc. So you too can check in to see what the hounds do by watching their channel either here or on their site: http://www.ustream.tv/channel/stan-cam1


Streaming live video by Ustream

Easter Show

My family took me and my new compadre, Jess to the Royal Easter Show at the Auckland Showgrounds this weekend. We were bundled into the car and off we went, I love traveling in the car and stood all the way with my nose out of the window. Jess just lay there. Once inside the grounds we easily found all of our old mates and met many more new ones at the GAP tent. Jess had met some of them too from the last GAP meet at Four Seasons in Glen Innes a couple of weeks ago. It was really busy and we were ideally positioned between the rabbits and alpacas to really want to get off the stand and go find the source of the smells! Apart from that distraction we were on a corner site and had loads of traffic come past us. We were all over loved, patted, stroked and kissed by thousands of people.

As a result of us hanging around as we did, we were able to hand out loads of brochures and many of the visitors are now really interested in adopting some of our fellow hounds. I hope they do.

The images below are from the show. Forgot to write down the names of the hounds but you will all know who you are!

GAP - Advert

I have just spent a good deal of the day at the Royal Easter Show in Auckand promoting the GAP cause. I was accompanied by the new arrival in the family, Jess. We and the other hounds got huge amounts of attention, but more of that later. I did overhear that an advert has been produced on our behalf. So as soon as I got home I looked it up on the GAP website and have posted it here: Please pass it on!

Winsome Jess

Today, after 5 weeks of fostering by Laura in Auckland. Jess came home today to live with Stanley. Currently Stanley is 35kg and Jess is 23.5kg she is much smaller than Stan, but is already asserting herself. The two of them have been getting to know each other all day. We are ensuring that the next week will be quiet and measured for Jess so that she settles in quickly. Good news however, tonight she ate all of her food that was given to her. Here is a picture of her and Stan walking on the reserve. Tomorrow they will both attend the Easter Show for GAP.

Greyhound information

My family were cruising You Tube today and found the following video about us Greyhounds. They thought that it was a pretty neat overview of us hounds. They have posted it to my blog and encourage everyone else who has an online presence to embed the video to their sites in order that anyone looking to adopt has some information to look at.

Four Seasons Pet Store and Waiatarua GAP walk

My family took me out to Waiatarua Reserve today. We go here quite a lot as it is a wildlife wetland and dog off lease exercise area, although strangely they never let me off the leash here. The purpose of this visit today was to meet up with some of my old mates and meet some new ones. I was hoping to see Arrow my half brother, but either we missed each other or Arrow had another gig.

We had a great amble around the wetland and at the end of the walk we posed for the ubiquitous photo. It was a great turn out, I think that I counted, well sniffed, 16 hounds in total. Way to go Auckland GAPpers!

After the walk there seemed to be an unseemly haste on behalf of our owners to procure caffeine from Nosh in Glenn Innes. After this we paraded at Four Seasons Pet Store just along from Nosh. We met some new hounds here. We met Barney, Nikki, Poonie, Ice and Hoss as usual but were introduced to so many new hounds that I am not sure of all of their names. But I do remember Isis, Otis, Molly, and Winsome Jess. You can see most of us in the pictures below and if you can identify more of the names in the images please let me know by leaving a comment.

I did note much talk from my family of adopting another hound after today's gathering. I wonder what this might mean?

There are meant to be 31 images in this slideshow... If these are not all showing in the slideshow, click on the slide show to be taken to the originals and scroll through them manually.

If you want a copy of any of these images, just click on the slideshow and you can download the hi-res version of any of these images. Enjoy

Itchy and Scratchy!

I had an allergic reaction to substances unknown last week! At about 8:30 in the evening I started scratching all over and started to swell. Within minutes I was covered in hives, man they itched! I was rushing around the house rubbing myself on anything to alleviate the itching, none of which worked. My family were so worried about me, they took me to the emergency vets. After a short wait and throwing up in the surgery in spectacular fashion I was given an antihistamine injection, I was sent home. After a 30 hours I was back to my normal self. The vet thinks that it might have been an insect bite that set me off. So as the White tips come in out of the cold and settle in warm beds, please check your bedding regularly!

GAP - Eco Day

It has been a while since my last post. I have been busy but not with blogging!

It was a great day today. My family took me out to meet some of my old mates and to meet some new ones. We were promoting ourselves again and we had lots of attention from lots of adults and children and even the Mayor! It was great to see Stanley again, we did not get a chance to get up to much, but still, there is always a next time! I met Maggie and Tux and Nicky and Poonie for the first time and re-aquainted myself with Barny, Hoss and Reba again.

After the day I reflected that if we had EFTPOS machines on our backs we could have sold ourselves many times over. Many people thought that we were up for adoption, if we were we would have been taken there and then! In the picture below you can see Tux and I posing with Mayor Len Brown and in the slide show you can see all of us.