Ok.. So a bit about me and well.. my life! My name is Christin. Although my nickname is Chris. I live in Northern Colorado. I am a Junior handler, I haven't started competing in agility with my dogs yet, but hope to soon. I have owned dogs all of my life. When I was born, my family owned a Norweigan Elk Hound. His name was Shadow and he was such a love. Very hypper, but very lovable. I remember him well. We had him while we lived in our old house and when we moved to our current house, we owned him for a couple more years. He had to be humanly uthanized because he would not stop getting into serious dog fights with other dogs in our neighborhood. Okay, so that sounds like we never had control over him and he ran the streets. Really, he didn't. He was a smart dog and he kept on digging his way out of the yard. His main reason on doing this was to go "flirt" in a masculin canine matter with the female dogs. But he also seemed to want to get out to go get into fights with other dogs. It seemed he wanted to fight or something. We tried out hardest to keep him in, we tried many things. At one point, something worked and he didn't escape for quite sometime. But then, he did it again, he got out of the yard and was off, once again. Oh brother... So we went and looked for him, and what we found was devistating. He was still alive, thank god, but he was is terrible shape. He got into a very bad dog fight and was ripped to shreds. He was bloody all over, missing fur, and in pain. We took him to the vet right away, the vet said there wasn't much to do in that situation. Our best option was to uthinize him. We decided that would be best for him, and he was humanly uthinized. It was a tragic death, and we miss him much.

     After Shadow's passing, I was without dogs for about two years or so. Then we got two Labrador Retrievers. I was just young at the time, about five years old. My mom was looking for just one family dog, because she thought the family would enjoy another pet. So she looked around and found a lab breeder was going out of business. This breeder was offering free labs. My mom thought labs would be a good family dog and called the lady up to schedule a time to come pick one up. When she called there were 3 labs she was offering for free left. There was a Chocolate, a Black, and a Yellow lab. We wanted the Chocolate lab. A few days later, we drove down to parker, where the breeder lived, to pick up our dog. By the time we got there, the Chocolate lab had already been given a home. There was the Yellow and the Black lab left. So, we decided we wanted the Yellow lab. But there was a catch... the breeder said that Mindy (the yellow) could not live without Bodie (the black). She said Mindy would not eat, drink, play, or do anything without Bodie by her side. We took both of them. Now, she let all of her dogs out to come into the house. There was about 10-15 labs that came tumbling out of a small wire kennel outdoors. They all ran into the house and we were trampled by lots of goofy and hypper dogs that seemed to be extremly happy to receive human attention. The dogs all looked fine and seemed as if the owner/breeder was a decent lady. We brought Mindy and Bodie home. When we got home, we realized the condition they were in. They felt and looked like they hadn't had a bath in months. They weren't hungry, but seemed happy to be fed real dog food. The worst part of it all, was they had tape worms. Very bad, very bad indeed. We bathed them, fed them well, got them up to date on vaccines, and got their tape worms treated. The dogs back at the breeders could have been in way worse conditions than it seemed. Actually, we are almost possitive they were. Just by the way they acted when they saw us and the conditions Mindy and Bodie were in. I consider Mindy and Bodie both rescue dogs, because they really were rescued from the situation they were in. Hopefully all of the other labs that were there found great homes! When we brought them home, Bodie was 2, and Mindy was 5. Three years after that, Mindy was diagnosed with Brain Cancer. She was sadly humanly uthinized.

 Bodie was scarred for life after Mindy's passing. She lost her best friend, she was extremly saddened by this loss. It was very obvious she was in pain. She was no longer her hypper self, she wasn't as eager to play ball, and she mopped around the house all the time. We knew she needed another canine friend, and that is when Barney came along. Mindy was my dad's dog, so we let this next dog be his as well. I am sad to say that Bodie has passed away due to a brain tumor, Bodie was humanly uthanized. She is probably happy to be reunited with Mindy in a better place. Okay, on with Barney's story... We walked into PetSmart one day and there was a Greyhound event going on. We looked at the dogs and my parents fell in love with the breed. My dad decided that was the breed of dog he wanted. So we looked around at all of the Greyhound Rescues in Colorado. We literally looked at all of the rescues and all the dogs they had to offer. It took us forever to pick a dog!! But finally, after many debates, my dad decided to go to Recycled Racers and adopt a dog named "Barney." He was a Black Tuxedo/Irish male Greyhound. He was a big boy. Kind of jumpy, but very lovable and curious. We adopted him in 2001. We have him to this day. Visit Barney's page to see more about him!!

Like I said, my parents fell in love with the breed. So we became a member of Colorado Greyhound Adoption (CGA) and volunteered many hours with them. But, we finally got fed up with them. They aren't the kindest group and they are very big headed. We then became members of Friends of Retired Greyhounds (FORG). We have known this group since 2001 and been members since, oh I'd say somewhere in 2001. We fostered many, many Greyhounds and eventually my mom was elected to become a board member. She is now the Vice President of FORG. I am also a Junior Board Member and very proud of it. We are great friends with the President and their family. FORG is a wonderful group with lots of generous and nice people. Anyways, we went to the President's house one night to pick up one of our fosters. We stayed there until 12 in the morning waiting for the trailer to arrive with our Greyhounds!!! We were unloading the dogs from the breeder's trailer and BAM!!! I saw my dog. I saw Treasure jump off that trailer and I knew she was my dog! I knew she was MY dog, MY dog!!! Sure enough, she came home with us, as a foster. But not for long, I convinced my dad to allow me to keep her and now she is my dog. I adopted her in 2002. I changed her name to April. Visit April's page for more info on her!!!