Happy Holidays and Happy New Year

Hope everyone had a wonderful Christmas and here's hoping everyone also has a great New Year! Nellie had a very good Christmas and her New Year is hopefully going to go splendidly as well. She had an absolute blast playing in the snowfall we got last weekend, although she did spend a few minutes barking at that crazy white stuff falling all over the place and covering up her favorite places to pee ;-)
Nellie remains ready to go her forever home. She's learned about all she can here; she does steps, knows the "go potty" command, walks pretty well on the leash, has learned to play with toys, will accept treats from our hands (most of the time - she relapses into skittishness occasionally), has no issues with routine doggie maintenance such as toenail clipping, grooming/brushing etc.
As noted in previous posts, Nellie is always going to have some shyness issues, although they will fade somewhat into the background as time passes and she settles in and learns the daily routine. Nellie is particularly happy in the morning when the family gets up. She's quite the tail-wagger in the a.m. and will come up to the bed and stick her cold, wet nose right into your face to let you know that it's time to get up and have breakfast!
For those who like having a dog that's aware of its domain and surrounding area, Nellie will bark when strangers approach/walk by the house. This is not to say that she's a watchdog by any means, but she will let you know when someone is close by when she spots them.
A brand new year is just around the corner and Nellie would like nothing more than to start 2010 by finding a forever home with a loving family, a fenced-in yard, and another hound to another to hang around with. If you can make that happen for this sweetheart of a girl, please give Denise a call and get the ball rolling.

Nellie, Nellie!

Hey all!
Once again, my apologies for the lack of updates (and pics). We recently purchased a laptop to supplement our aging pc, and due to some issues with our old DSL modem not playing nicely with our router, we were occasioned by some access outages.... Anyhow, all those issues have been fixed and we're now back to our old internet surfing selves. Pictures of Miss Nellie will be forthcoming, I promise.
Nellie is doing absolutely great! She's become very, very comfortable here at home. In fact, she's turning into a "regular" dog, a far cry from the skittish hound who first walked into our house a little over a month ago. Nellie now happily greets us at the door, barks at strangers, plays with toys (she's even been spotted chewing on sticks outdoors), takes treats from our hands, eats her kibble all at once instead of meandering around, enjoys leashed walks, etc, etc. She's still shy around strangers and has a tendency to turn away from other people when out for walks, but all in all, she's made some serious progress.
We still think she'd do best in a home with another hound or other medium-to-larger size dog. Nellie doesn't care much for small dogs, so those with dogs under 20 pounds or so will want to look elsewhere. Nellie would probably be fine as an only dog for someone with previous greyhound experience, but as noted in an earlier post, she takes her cues from the presence of other dogs, which considerably cuts down on acclimating to a new environment.
Nellie is straddling the border between being cat-safe and cat-trainable. She generally leaves the house feline alone unless they inadvertently cross paths, in which case she'll sometimes chase after her a bit, but we haven't noticed any seriously aggressive behavior towards the cat. YMMV, and as always, all initial interactions between even those hounds who are/were previously cat-safe, should be closely monitored.
We're very happy with her progress and we think she'll make an outstanding companion for a family that understands how to address those few needs related to her shy personality and are patient enough to allow her to bloom on her own as she's done with us.