By Suzanne Mooney
|
When you ask someone the name of her dog and she says, “Brat,” you would expect the dog’s behavior to match the name. According to San Dimas resident Jennifer Alcala, however, her Brat comes nowhere close to living up to her name. “Brat is the perfect dog. She’s so low-maintenance, so sweet,” Alcala says. “She’s a big couch potato.” Brat is a six-year old Greyhound who was bred to race. Her official racing name was “Old Spoiled Brat,” but now she just goes by Brat. Alcala and her husband, Edgar, adopted Brat in 2002 from Retired Racers, Inc, a Greyhound rescue organization. “She came off the Phoenix, Arizona, race track,” Alcala says. “She just didn’t want to race. If they’re good racers they’ll keep them for about five years. Luckily for her she got adopted early so she’s pretty untainted by the tracks…she was only 2 ½ years old when we got her.” Now six years old, the only racing Brat does is to her pillow by the front window or to the backyard where she loves to sunbathe. The Alcalas first discovered Greyhounds after friends rescued one of these gentle giants with the help of Linda Brown from Retired Racers. But why is adopting a Greyhound considered a rescue? Because these animals are by-products of the Greyhound racing industry. They are treated like commodities and, in many cases, treated inhumanely. Dogs that do not make money for their owners are often sold to research facilities or killed. According to the Greyhound Protection League, approximately 20,000 Greyhounds are killed each year in the United States. When the truth came out in the 1980s about the poor treatment these beautiful animals were receiving at the tracks, Greyhound rescue organizations started popping up around the United States. Not only do these groups save as many animals as possible from being killed but they also rehabilitate the dogs and try to make each one suitable for life off the track. “You’ve got to teach them everything,” Alcala says. They’re like babies because they’ve lived most of their lives in a cage.” By “everything” she means: to walk down stairs, to sit, to play games, to live in a house; things that most dogs take for granted. Rehabilitating these dogs is a lot of work for the rescuers and eventually for the owners but for the Alcalas it is all worth it. “For us it’s such a blessing to see the animal go from being a commodity for someone to being a pet,” Alcala says. “They’re not like any other dog – they’re 100% trying to please you. You tell them twice not to do something, and that’s it.” |
Brat shares the Alcalas’ love with a three-year old Greyhound named “Notorious Molina” or “Molly” for short. Unlike Brat, Molly spent an extended amount of time at the track and suffered more abuse. “Molly’s been more of a challenge for us…trying to get her acclimated to living in a home. She’s taken a lot of our patience,” Alcala admits. “She’s come a long way but she has taken a lot longer to acclimate because she had a lot more trauma [at the track] in a short amount of time.” Even when their patience wore thin, however, the Alcalas never gave up on Molly. “We said, ‘If we give up on this dog, who else is going to give her this much patience?’” As fondly as Alcala talks about her “girls”, Brat and Molly, one might assume that for this dog-lover it is Greyhounds or nothing. “I’m not partial to any dog. Every dog needs a home,” Alcala says. She had the opportunity to put her non-breed bias to the test in July 2005 when a black Chihuahua-mix puppy showed up in her San Dimas neighborhood. The puppy was flea-ridden and full of worms yet that didn’t stop Alcala. “We think someone just tossed her in the neighborhood. We thought she was a kitten, that’s how small she was.” Alcala took the puppy to a local veterinarian to bring her back to health and then welcomed Zoey into her home and into her heart. The only concern was whether or not Zoey would get along with “the girls.” “She is a love bug – she wants to be right with the girls. When she’s separated from them she howls at the window…when I bring them home she could care less about me – she’s too busy kissing and loving them.” Once Zoey was welcomed into the family, Alcala’s neighbors said that she was a stray who had “found the perfect house” and “knew which house to run to”, but to this writer it sounds like all three dogs somehow found their way to the perfect house. Their stories are different, their pasts are varied, but for Brat, Molly and Zoey, they finally have a loving place to call home. |