Ava & Nina
Ava and Nina the two besties we didn’t know we needed in our lives!
My partner Carly and I adopted Ava, the beautiful blue greyhound, from Give A Greyhound A Home (GAGAH) in April 2017. We had an older Cairn Terrier at the time, Harry, which had been Carly's dog before we met. According to the rescue she was a non-chaser and thus no good for racing (which surprises us as she is a big muscly girl and loves a chase)! I remember seeing a photo of her on GAGAH's facebook page - she was lying on the sofa in her foster home with an accompanying appeal for a permanent home. I don't remember exactly what it said but we knew we had to have her! After a successful homecheck, we headed north to Aberdeenshire with little Harry in tow to meet his potential new little (big) sister. They got on fine, having simply ignored each other for most of the time so Ava made the 3 hour journey back down with us! The foster explained that Ava along with her sister and a few others were handed over to GAGAH from a trainer based in England. They drove south and had met halfway at a service station to hand over the dogs to the rescue. Such a sad thought that these lovely animals are so disposable!
In June 2019, we saw a Facebook appeal through an organisation called Podencos In Need Scotland (PINS) for a Galgo named Nina. She was currently in Spain but travel had been arranged for her to come over to a foster in Scotland. She had been picked up in a perrera (killing station) where dogs are killed if they are not collected within a certain time frame (for a fee, of course). Sadly many Galgos suffer this fate in Spain - they are used by hunters (galgueros) for coursing hares and disposed of or cruelly killed when the hunting season is over.
We applied to PINS for Nina but we were informed shortly after that Nina was going to someone else known by the foster. We were pretty sad about this but several days later we got a phone call to say that it had fallen through and that she was ours if we wanted her!! Along with Ava and Harry, we drove a couple hours to meet Nina. She was very timid to begin with but loves people so she quickly came around. She is a very affectionate soul! Sadly Harry has since passed but we have the most amazing girls.
We have been pretty lucky that they have both adapted to home life very easily, they have their quirks but generally they are very laid back, easy going dogs! If they get a nice walk, some play time, cuddles and a sofa then they're happy! Now they also get to hang out with me in a dog shop called Odd Dogs @odddogsstore in Glasgow with access to all the treats so I think they've hit the jackpot really!
