This is the story of Hana/Nana the way her owner told us: „I promised to write about Hana quite a while ago, but I managed to get down to the actual writing only now. Here you go then! It was last summer that I came up with the crazy idea that I was badly in need of a large greyhound on top of owning three whippets already. I looked up what the Hungarian Greyhound Rescue could „offer me”. I picked three dogs, went to see them and eventually I chose Hana. Nana in fact, that was her name then. She was a totally antisocial, unapproachable, non-communicative but stunning greyhound girl. Those who knew her warned me that she was prone to biting people, she hardly could be put on the leash, and to drag her into the street from the garden was absolutely impossible. For all these reasons, Henni Nagy (leader of the Hungarian Greyhound Rescue) was quite reluctant to hand her into my care, but fortunately we both made the good decision eventually. At home, they got used to each other with my three whippets without any problems, and to meet new dogs was not a danger any more either. For a few days, I walked Hana without a leash in the garden, fortunately she learned to heel very quickly. I planned to make her used to the leash gradually, but an illness crossed my plan. A few days after the adoption, Hana had a temperature, so we rushed to the vet. Finally, she had to stay in the surgery of the Budapest Faculty of Veterinary Science, because she developed a pneumothorax. She was put in an oxygen-crate. I was heartbroken to see the way she was watching me go. She surely believed that her luck changed for the worse again. Luckily, she fully recovered and when we got home she rushed in the flat to sit on her cushion as if she had feared that it vanished into thin air by the time she got there. She has become an utterly open minded, confident, happy greyhound girl, a real princess. She performs very well at the lure coursing competitions, and it puts a smile on everyone’s face to see her literally forcing strokes out of any people she can find. She never ever attempted to bite anyone, mind you it is quite a job to take the lure out of her mouth once she grabbed it. Last time after having grabbed it, she ran over to my three whippets who were standing waiting on the edge of the coursing ground and simply dropped the lure in front of them. Anyway, anyone who decides to adopt a dog from a shelter should brace him or herself that it will be a time and patience consuming job to rehabilitate a physically and/or mentally injured dog, but the price will be the great joy of having a wonderful pet … happily ever after.”
