The Greyhound
The Greyhound, characteristics and history.Written by Russell Savige
Training Dog Breeds
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 something in a hurry, you should only use
your mouth for eating, laughing and asking questions.
Copyright 2004 Russell Savige Training Dog Breeds
Article written by Russell Savige
Training Dog Breeds