When we got back, our little baby B was sleeping peacefully on her bed and I decided to treat her good behaviour with a female-bonding ramble round the field. I climbed over the fence and B limbo-ed under (difficult for B, her legs are rather long) and had a lovely sniff round all the rabbit holes. I even felt confident enough to let her off the lead. Just as I unclipped it though, a rabbit shot straight past us, and B was off like a rocket while I stood like a lemon wondering what the hell I had just done. It must have been a turbo-charged rabbit because she didn’t seem to be gaining on it, and after yelling my head off to try and get her back, I decided to carry on walking and hope she would eventually catch me up. I was quite glad I was on my own as my face was feeling a bit red and hot and I think I was just about to cry.

Luckily, the dog apparently has more brain than its owner and I shortly heard the distant rumble of greyhound upon pasture, and a rather knackered and cross-looking but thankfully rabbit-less B appeared by my side. After that fright I decided enough was enough, clipped the lead on and returned to the house. This time at the fence, however, there was no graceful limbo. B just sat there with a very stubborn look on her face and refused to limbo. Swearing and once again about to cry (I know, I’m a big girl) I tied her to the gate, stomped back to the house, got the key to the fence and walked back. I unlocked the padlock and then swore like a trooper for ten minutes as I tried unsuccessfully to budge the heavy bolt across. I finally gave up and with no amount of cajoling working to persuade her to come back under the fence, we had to walk right round the field to the other side of the house where I finally persuaded her under a higher bit of fence there.

When we got back in, I grabbed a towel and had started to rub her dry when Mum came in and said ‘God, is that blood?’ To my horror we noticed that her back leg was dripping blood. On further inspection, all four of her feet were bleeding. Greyhounds seem to have a little fleshy pad that looks kind of like it would be the heel of the hand. She’d managed to cut two of them, and had two other grazes on her paws. She was so good while we bathed and inspected her paws, standing patiently with one paw raised and never once crying or wincing. Luckily, after a bit of pressure, the worst one stopped bleeding and the others didn’t seem too bad. I felt terrible though, and had to knock up a batch of biscuits to make myself feel better (of course B was the grateful recipient of the first one - don’t tell Hubby).

Feeling like a total failure as a dog owner I called J from the greyhound rehoming charity for some therapy. I couldn’t work out how she’d cut herself but figured maybe the field was very uneven seeing as it sometimes contains cows. J was her usual patient, reassuring self and made me feel slightly better, saying that when greyhounds have been exercising, the tiniest cut will bleed a lot. There’s no excuse though, as J had told us before that greyhounds do have quite delicate feet (they race on soft sand) and I should really have thought about the field being too rutted. I do think I was a bit enthusiastic in my new dog-owner role. I have this vision of striding round the field in my Barbour jacket and Hunter wellies while my faithful hound trots at my side (or in B’s case, runs complete laps of the field and shouts ‘loooooooser‘ from the other side while I puff after her).

Lesson learnt, young B will be receiving a lot of TLC while she recovers and has obviously forgiven me, as she’s asleep on my feet as I type. It’s a right guilt trip this dog owning business.

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