Planet Greyhound

As some of you may have heard, we boarded our two greyhound boys Vladimir and Vitali on the 19th and 20th of October while we went out of town to St. Louis Mo. for a NLCS playoff game between the St. Louis Cardinals and the San Francisco Giants. The game was on Friday night, so we dropped the boys off at their vets to stay Friday and Saturday night. We were told there would be someone there between 07:00 AM and 08:00 AM Sunday so we could pick them up, I later received a voice mail on my cell phone from a lady named Megan saying we had to pick them up between 07:30 AM and 08:00 AM.

We arrived at the vet to pick them up Sunday morning at approx 07:50 AM and the person there let us in the back door, the first thing I noticed when walking into the room was both of their dog beds lying on the floor in a common area. While the person there went to get their leashes, I went into one of the areas where I heard dogs barking and noticed the boys standing in an enclosure that was a bare, wet concrete floor. As the lighting was not all that great I could not make out much more than that or see the condition they were in, even as they were led into the common area it was hard to notice as all they wanted to do was get outside. I took the leashes and took them outside and they both had gotten no more than a few feet out the door when they started to urinate.

Once outside in the sunlight we could see their coats were stained yellow on their bellies, back, sides, legs and their tails looked like they had soaked in urine, there were also traces of feces on their bellies and feet, they also had what appeared to be “urine burns” on their feet and urine stained, raw looking abrasions of the elbows. The pictures here do not convey how terrible this looked in person, but you should be able to get the idea.

We were told later that the person in charge of them those two nights said she had taken them out three times Saturday and they were fine, that they apparently got in the condition they were in when we picked them up from the last time she had them out Saturday until we picked them up at ten minutes till eight Sunday morning. We told them that was not at all believable and they told us, we believe our employee.

My personal opinion is that they were totally neglected those two days, they were not taken out at all.  That they were left to urinate on themselves and lie in it when they were so tired they could not stand up anymore. I believe they were traumatized by this experience to the point where the first few days we had them home, they wanted no part of being around my truck, especially if I opened the door…they would pull away, maybe they thought I might be taking them back?  Before this incident they always got excited when we went toward the truck and if the door opened, they wanted in. Hopefully, they will get back to that soon.

We’ve been using a “Lincocin” topical on their elbows since we’ve had them home along with an antibiotic cream and the elbows are starting to look again like they did before we left them with the people who were supposed to be caring for them.

We provided beds for each of our boys, but as stated earlier in this post, they were never given to them to lie on, the beds were simply taken to the back and tossed on the floor and stayed there until we picked them up. This ordeal has upset my wife and I to no end, to think that someone you trust with your pets health and well being can let someone in their employ treat animals in this way is beyond reprehensible and to make matters worse, they tried to blame us for their condition by saying we should have paid them to have them bathed before we picked them up. To me that is such an asinine statement, I’m not going to even comment any further on it.

I am posting some photos taken shortly before their stay, followed by photos we took immediately after picking them up. This is neglect, pure and simple and I would not want to see this happen to anyone else’s pets…but this was especially harmful to greyhounds who are so clean by nature and have such thin skin.

Some pics before….

Some pics after their stay at the vets….