April 22, 2012-December 22, 2023
There’s so much I want to say about Guinevere, but everything I try to write comes out as “She was perfect”.
Seriously. The only thing I can recall about her behavior that ever vexed us was that she was very, very hard to house train. And the eventual solution that problem turned out to be that we just weren’t giving her enough time to empty out completely before bringing her back inside. She needed to pee three times over a period of a few minutes before it was safe to let her loose in the house for a while. After that issue was solved, she really was perfect.
She was probably the most beautiful greyhound we’ve ever had. She came to us as a dark blue (gray coloration in greyhounds is a genetic mutation of black that is called “blue”) brindle 12 week old puppy with a dark blue mask, and eyes that had just recently changed from ice blue to gray. As she aged, her eyes continued to change until they were the color of dark amber. Her nose leather was dark gray, and her brindle was blue striped with a light rust color. She had white on her chest as well as on some of her toes and the tip of her tail. I’ve never seen another greyhound the same shade of blue brindle that she was.
Guinevere adored my husband Wayne above all other people in our circle of family and friends.
Guin and her brother Riley came to us from Don Petch and Barb Hermann of Vancouver Island, Canada. We are both eternally grateful to Barb and Don for allowing the beautiful creature that was Guinevere to come so far to share our lives. Barb even gave Guin her name as a puppy. It fit her perfectly.
Our friend Caroline Thibodeau adopted Guin’s brother Riley. Caroline’s sister Marianne used her animal communicator skills to talk to the pups while they were on the trip down from Canada. Guin told her that she “hoped that her new daddy was as nice as her old daddy, because she really loved her old daddy.” Laurel Drew, a dear friend who had given us Guinevere’s great-great grandmother Snow many years prior to Guin’s birth, drove to northern California to get the pups from their breeder, and brought them back to her kennel in New Mexico. I drove to Abilene, Kansas to pick up the pups from Laurel Drew and Elaine Summerhill who transported them to me from New Mexico. It was a 2 day drive home after I took possession of the pups. On the way I dropped Riley off with his new mom, Caroline Thibodeau, and got home just before dark.
When I let Guin out of the crate after the long drive home, she took one look at Wayne and the rest of the world ceased to exist for her. She only had eyes for her new daddy, and launched herself to wrap her forelegs around his neck as he crouched to call her. She slept in his arms that evening, clinging to him like a monkey. She was his dog for the rest of her life. I was useful to her for providing food and opening the door for potty trips, and my lap would suffice for cuddles if Wayne was busy or away. But Wayne was the love of her life. She lit up like a Christmas tree every day when he came home from work, and she spent every evening leaning on him or cuddling against him, and gazing at him like a love-struck girl. I tell people that if they really want to be happy, they need to find someone who looks at them the way that Guinevere looked at Wayne.
She loved to cuddle. She was the best bed and couch partner ever, and didn’t crowd or push. She just snugged herself up against us and radiated adoration in return. She really enjoyed long car rides, and was a great traveler. She quickly learned that the car wouldn’t move until she was lying down, and would hop in and flop right over on one side with her head lifted up to watch out the window. She learned a long series of tricks that she would only offer when really good treats appeared. She loved our family tradition of getting White Castle sliders on dog birthdays and after vet visits, and knew when we were at a WC drive through. We got no peace until we got home and broke out the dog burgers first.
When she was about 3 we were given a vintage pop-up tent camper. Guin adored camping in “the cloth house” as we call it. Whenever we brought it home from storage to prepare for a trip, she would hover around the kitchen and the back door to make sure that we didn’t forget to pack her as we loaded the car and the camper. In the mornings during our camping trips, she would launch herself up on the very high bed in the camper every morning and insist on bed cuddles with us before we started the days’ adventures. We hiked for miles down trails and beaches all over the state. She got invited into several no-dogs-allowed museums because she was such a perfect lady and won over the people in charge on the days of our visits. She even went canoeing with us once down the Huron River on a sunny, calm day. She made herself comfortable on the dog bed in the bottom of the canoe, and took it all in stride, as if greyhounds went canoeing every day.
As she aged, her health began to fail very, very gradually. She developed a neurological disorder called Geriatric Onset Laryngeal Paralysis Polyneuropathy that affected her breathing if she got too stressed or too warm. The GOLPP also took her voice, reducing her formerly strong bark to a raspy wheeze, sometimes followed by a cough. She didn’t let the disease stop her. She still wanted to continue going hiking and camping, but she couldn’t handle hot weather. So we started camping later into the fall and continued through the winter until the campgrounds closed when it finally snowed. We hiked all winter, walking slowly to avoid making her breathe too hard. She loved hiking at the local metro parks in the snow, and the GOLPP didn’t bother her in the cold weather.
The end of Guinevere’s life came quickly and caught us by surprise. She had a few days just before Christmas where she seemed generically uncomfortable and didn’t want to eat. This had happened several times previously during her life, and despite many tests over the years, the vets never found any reason for it. So at first we assumed it was just another random bout of inappetence. But late one night she began panting, and I found that her temperature was high. First thing the next morning I took her to the vet, who found that her entire liver was an inoperable tumor, and she was in pain. There was nothing to be done but to free her from the body that was failing her. The date happened to be exactly 4 months before her 12th birthday. The last person she saw before leaving us was her beloved Wayne.
The hole she left in our lives and hearts can never be filled. She really was perfect.
