The first time my daughter and her family came over, Rosie stuck to me like glue! Not only was she nervous because new people were in the house, but they brought little people with them! The kids are ages six, eight and 11, but they still scared her. As time went on, she became more use to my grandchildren. I felt it was important to have them over as much as possible. I needed to be able to evaluate her with kids so I could know what type of family she would fit best into. I soon learned that Rosie would never fit into a family who had small children. They just made her so nervous that she would shake all over. Her nervousness never made her aggressive with the children; instead she would become even more submissive.
Rosie is also a "screamer." By this I mean that she can literally scream like a child — well, it is actually worse than that. This is a terrible sound! If you tried to do something to her that startled her or scared her in any way she would let out this bloodcurdling scream! Pete and I soon learned how to approach her for doctoring or anything new in a non-threatening way, but it was obvious that this was something she was ALWAYS going to do on some level. One more thing to add to her resume!
Another problem with Rosie was her habit of sometimes peeing in the house. This is a behavior that is not all that common in greyhounds. Most greyhounds are very easy to housebreak because they are trained to their crate. They look at their crate as their house and like to keep it clean. When you bring them into your home they look at the home as a big crate and learn very quickly to keep it clean. But Rosie's anxiety is what caused her problem with peeing in the house. Of course, when people look at the dogs and ask questions about them, we always tell them everything that we can about that particular dog. I knew that Rosie was going to be hard to adopt. People would get really interested in her — she is a beautiful brindle, on the smaller side, and a real sweetie — but as soon as I explained about her anxiety problems, most of them would lose interest. I, of course, did not want to adopt her to someone who could not handle her problems because I knew they would eventually return her, and that would be terrible for her.
