Greyhounds are one of the oldest dog breeds known to man, with records tracing back over 8,000 years, in the form of cave drawings. The pyramids of Egypt contain numerous artifacts and wall drawings of greyhounds, in fact they were often buried alongside their masters, in the same tomb.

Nobody can say for sure how they came to be named ‘greyhounds’, but the suggestion that they used to be mainly gray in color is a lot of phooey in my opinion. I say this due to the fact that gray (or blue) is a shade, and not a true color. When mating blue dogs with other colors, the blue tends to breed out… in other words it is not a dominant color.

Another suggestion is that the name greyhounds comes from the old English words ‘grei’ meaning ‘dog’ and ‘nundr’ meaning ‘hunter’. Regardless of the origins of the name, the greyhound of today doesn’t look to be a lot different to the drawings of the dog many thousands of years ago.

Greyhounds have always been bred to hunt, and like as not, the origins of the breed lie in the fact that early man needed a means of catching small prey for food. I think the logical extension of this is that these dogs we call greyhounds, were bred by natural selection by early man to catch his food, with the breed later being refined by the Egyptians about 4,000 years ago, also for hunting. Then the nobility and landed gentry of Europe and England further refined them to give us what we know as coursing dogs.

In the last 80 years we have further refined the breed to suit circular track racing, to the point where the racing greyhound of today, is probably about 10% faster over a ¼ mile than it was in the early 1900’s.

There can be no doubting that this has been at the cost of the breed losing the stamina of our early coursing hounds. The fastest breed of dog, they can cover a ¼ mile in under 24 seconds, reaching speeds of over 40 miles an hour. They are a graceful, agile, gentle natured dog, the males standing about 28 to 30 inches tall and weighing 65 to 85 lbs, with the bitches being about 2 inches shorter and 10 lbs lighter.

The greyhound is built for speed, with a streamlined, muscular body. The neck is long and arched, the head is fine and long. They have characteristic rose ears, usually folded flat against the neck when the dog is relaxed. They will prick forward and may stand almost erect when the greyhound is interested in something. The chest is deep, the loin arched and the waist narrow, giving the dog a very distinctive appearance.

They have a fine short-haired coat, which can be any color from white through fawns, brindles to black, including party colors.

They have a gentle disposition, even though they are a hunting dog. They make an ideal pet if their size is not an issue. They don’t take a lot of looking after… a ½ mile walk in the evening is adequate exercise if they are not overfed. Whilst they are easily trained to chase, they are not so easily trained to obey ‘normal’ dog commands, unless their training starts at an early age.

Care must be taken to keep greyhounds on a lead in public, as they tend to lose their footing on manmade surfaces when running, due in main part to their speed. But let them loose in a field or enclosed paddock, and their speed and gracefulness will leave you speechless.

This is what you should do if you are a novice greyhound trainer:
- buy all the book’s on Greyhound Training that you can find.
- read all the topics you can find on this web site, on training and feeding racing greyhounds
- befriend the best greyhound trainers you can find in your local area, and offer to help them with trialing, race night handling, feeding, looking after their pups etc.
- and most importantly, “Listen with your ears, not your mouth”. You have two ears and one mouth for a reason. If you want to learn, you should only use your mouth for eating, laughing and asking questions.

Copyright 2004 Russell Savige. All rights reserved.
http://Training-dog-breeds.com
bio = Russell Savige has been successfully breeding, rearing and training greyhounds in Australia since 1986.
http://training-dog-breeds.com

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