Inspired by a conversation with other members of the cult of greyhound, I thought it would be a bit of fun to review the year from Sam & Maisy’s perspective. It has been simultaneously more fun and much harder than I imagined – largely in part due to Bea. This time of year is the anniversary of her waiting across the Rainbow Bridge rather than in front of the fridge and I felt her loss keenly as I looked at what Sam & Maisy did with their year and the things she didn’t get to do. Granted she would have hated anything that wasn’t cuddling on the sofa or being fed chicken but it was still hard to go through. It was also hard thinking of all those poor hounds that are victims of the racing industry – that they will never get the opportunity to do these things. So this post is dedicated to the memory of all the hounds that have crossed the bridge in 2024 (and beforehand).
Without further ado, and with encouragement from Little Boy… on with the year.
January
Sam was hugely relieved to return to work after enforced time off over Christmas – this slacking did not sit well with him and 40 hours a week supervising Mum was a welcome break from socialising. The added bonus to this was that Mum did some January sale shopping and two new Bella & Toby floof beds turned up to a make a delightful floof stack and stop the sibling bickering around who got the doorway floof.
Maisy was not bothered either way by the work situation (as long as she got a floof) but with delighted with a weekend visitor in the form of her photographic doppelganger Mindy (they would like to point out they look nothing alike but Mindy’s Mum and I have to double check every photo to see which dog it is!). Mindy is a delightful fren and Maisy was very pleased to have her to sniff with for the weekend.
A bigger friend outing was had in January, taking in the historical sights of St Fagans with many local cultured hounds in brightly coloured coats adding some much needed cheer to what was a grey month. Collar Club provided some spectacular sunrises, almost making it worthwhile being dragged out of bed at some unholy hour on a Monday morning.
January did offer a particular low though – Sam & Maisy had to use the front door of the house once. This is frankly unprecedented and unacceptable – the magic door portal has nothing to do with their house and they do not wish to exit or enter via it ever again. It took some flying hounds and a considerable degree of dog treats and even that was not considered reasonable. Their protest firmly made, the front door was not used again in 2024 for puppy walks.
February
February bore the fruits of Mum’s inability to leave wine, the internet and her credit card alone and some new attire turned up all the way from Australia – some delightful Houndtees. Maisy absolutely refused to try on her “Pets not Bets” sweater but rather liked her floral t shirt, and Sam loved both his jumpers but remains convinced that he cannot jump onto the big Sam bed while wearing them.
It was a big month for Sam – after a dodgy December arthritis wise he started physiotherapy and hydrotherapy with the wonderful ladies at JCB Animal Physio. He still takes great delight in his fortnightly sessions and remains the only greyhound there to continually smash hydrotherapy workouts on the water treadmill. The fact that the team there do excellent fusses is an added bonus.
The biggest walk of the year took place with Greyhound Rescue Wales in Cardiff Bay, having a pleasant sunny but cold walk with a lot of our friends and lots of new houndy friends courtesy of the GRW organisers and walk leaders from the Senedd building across to the barrage and back. This was huge fun with lots of butts and sniffs to sniff and were heckin exhausted afterwards. Needed pizza bones to recover.
The best news of the month for us was that our Dottie fren, who was on foster with Gracie and Twiggy was adopted in Cardiff and started joining us for Monday morning Collar Clubs. Maisy is particularly thrilled by this as she adores her Dottie fren – her favourite field sniff buddy and an ally to gang up on Sam when he gets too much in terms of play.
Dad decided he would like it if he had a puppy to occasionally provide support during his working day – so an attempt to re-do his office is underway. Sam and Maisy do not like the disruption but are simultaneously very keen to be helpy in their own unique ways.
March
The month began in wonderfully bright and cheery manner with a weekend visit from Pippa fren, who took charge of the furniture assembly supervision team and was extremely helpy standing on the instructions and just in front of the parts, ably assisted by Sam and Maisy. We took advantage of Pippa being in town and had another fren walk to St Fagans with Bucky, Gracie, Twiggy and Dottie.
We enjoy many visits over the year to see Twiggy and Gracie but this month had a special visit to meet their new foster bro – the handsome boy Tricks. Even Sam, who can be a bit fussy with new boy frens was happy to meet Tricks and say hello nicely.
The rest of March was a little subdued – Maisy ripped a dew claw playing with ball at Collar Club, so there was some quiet cuddly days at home, which are often the best sorts of days anyway.
April
April brought a beautiful Easter weekend, where Sam and Maisy enjoyed exploring the beauty of Dyffryn Gardens in springtime – new flowers and new sniffs and even a rabbit sighting which was hugely exciting.
Easter Monday brought its usual 7.30 am Collar Club – where Sam ran into the sandpit at speed, missed his footing and backflipped out of the sandpit with a horrific scream of death, summoning Mum and Dad at speed. Miraculously he had only cut his shoulder and given himself a bit of a bang – Mum was wondering where the nearest emergency vet was and how much that would cost before 8am on a Bank Holiday. Sam was more upset by the shower he had when he got home to get all the sand out of his coat (his view was that you cant see it on a fawn dog anyway…) but Mum still cringes when he goes near the sandpits.
April was a social month – Sam and Maisy hosted their annual Masters weekend watching of golf, breaking it up with a borky sort of walk around Hensol magic forest and Maisy condescending to sit next to Greg on the sofa. She continued making new sofa friends when Mum hosted book club, jumping up between two of the ladies who dared to sit on her sofa and demanded fusses in compensation. Huge progress for a Maisy in April.
This was also the month that Dad discovered AI and spent a lot of time making adorable family portraits of us.
May
It’s May-sey month! This month was Maisy’s 6th birthday and she celebrated by hosting a joint birthday party with Dottie who turned 11 and was celebrating her first ever birthday with a family to love her. There was cake, party bags, hound frens with their associated humans and lots of fun and fusses. Maisy was particularly pleased with New Moo and cake.
May also marked Maisy’s second gotcha day – Mum can’t ever remember the actual date because she’s useless but we picked a weekend and marked it with a first ever Puppacino. Maisy thought these were excellent, Sam needed to be hand fed the whipped cream by Mum – its lucky her and Dad have endless patience.
There was a personal high for Sam this month. A long term Twitch follower of BobsieCam, he had the pleasure of meeting his (second to Bobsie) favourite star of the stream – SpareHuman. He was delighted to find SpareHuman could provide excellent scritches and did not come with an automated Hydrate noise. An all round good guy is SpareHuman.
June
Now that the good weather is properly underway, Mum and Dad decided to take advantage and do all of the day trips. First up was broadening our cultural horizons and getting our monies worth from National Trust membership, with a trip over the bridge to Tyntesfield. Hated the visitor area and cafe because people were there but loved the woodland trail.
A visit to the rescue centre at Hillcrest for the Raise for Greys Spa Afternoon on a Sunday – Sam and Maisy enjoyed a run around the field, a delightful shower and massage experience and some biscuits in the house at Hillcrest afterwards. I’m not sure if Sam had ever been in there as he was only briefly at Hillcrest during COVID, and I’m sure Maisy must have tried it out when she was there – but they both made us proud walking in confidently and settling down beautifully. Good puppies!
A more local visit provided a revelation that the pawrents have weirdly been looking for for years – we can now walk through the Mill estate near our house. Sam and Maisy did not care about the removal of the building work fences at all until they realised a cat lived on the street they could now walk down and this proved to make it a much more interesting route than the path by the river.
Cultural continued with a trip to Raglan Castle – this was mindblowing to both dogs as outside and inside were one and the same and the visit was short and sweet after Maisy tried to throw herself out of a turret window and Sam wanted to see if he could walk on the moat.
June provided the worst, most traumatic 90 seconds of Maisy’s year – she needed two ticks removing from her snoot. All credit to the vet nurse who suggested it was done somewhere most comfortable for Maisy and crawled into the boot of the Discovery to sort Maisy out from the safety of the car.
June – Sam and Bea’s gotcha day. Always bittersweet. Sam has now lived at home more time that he did in racing kennels.
July
July starts with Sam’s 8th birthday on the 1st and kicked off a month of adventures and new experiences! This was marked on the day with woofcakes, steak and squeaky toy Dinosaurs. A joint birthday party was hosted by Twiggy, who shares Sam’s birthday a few days later – complete with epic party hats and biscuits.
A month for doing ones duty – Maisy and Sam both performed the important civic duty of being puppies at Polling Stations and at the end of the month, Maisy started new employment in Dad’s newly renovated office as Safety Pup.
A mini break up to Ludlow broke up the month nicely. Maisy’s first ever hotel stay and she did superbly, bickering with Sam for the rights to the people bed, asking to go and explore outside at 2am and stealing breakfast bacon in the morning. She continues to amaze us with the progress she continues to make and how she lets us just push her boundaries. National Trust membership was utilised in full for visits to Croome and Croft Castle, along with a sneaky visit to David Austin rose gardens (Mum is deluded enough to think she can grow roses and wants more).
Part of this trip was to check out a potential new car – Maisy has successfully managed to break the boot of the Discovery again by making a jump (in or out) before the boot finished its automated open or close, thus jamming it. Sam is also starting to struggle consistently jumping in and out with the height and Dad has been diligently doing endless amounts of research into other options (he’s the best Dad ever) and we took a look at a Rifter. Happy to confirm puppies have plenty of room, its low enough for an easy in and out and it had Mums requirement of Apple Car play. We’ve had some great adventures in the Discovery since 2020, now time for new Rifter adventures.
August
After the busy busy of July, we took the opportunity to have a quieter August. Our ginger pony brother Spike was a bit poorly so Mum spent a lot of time looking after him, giving us the opportunity to see how Dad was getting on with his new job and paying diligent attention (at least on Maisy’s part) on how to be a Safety Pup.
We did manage to take the Rifter for a test run though – to National Trust Newark Park. Another beautiful parkland walk, followed by a sit on the grass in front of the beautiful house with some doggy ice cream (Mum had to help Sam as usual because ice cream containers are heckin’ confusing).
Physio continues to go well for Sam, although Mum and Dad seem to be apologising nearly every other week for whatever mischief he has done to himself since the last session. Over summer there is a lot more off lead time at Collar Club with friends and Sam just adores running and playing – he really comes alive on the field when he can run because he wants to, not because he’s being made to. Unfortunately he sometimes forgets he is not Benjamin Button and he can’t turn and accelerate as quickly as he would like. It makes the pawrents really happy to watch him just enjoy himself though. Maisy has decided she doesn’t hate being physio emotional support puppy anymore – she no longer pees on their floor and this month discovered they had an arm chair she can fit on.
Mum was allowed the internet again… so new Blas & Co outfits arrived. Dad is probably only going to find out when he reads this.
September
The return of an old favourite walk in September with a trip to Salmon Leaps. Mum and Dad were enthusiastically advocating a return until they ended up on the narrow path bit at the end where Sam decided after ignoring all dogs for an hour that he hated them all….
Mum saw an internet video (seriously someone take the internet off her) about food that was good for toofs so decided to try that with us (Dad obligingly made an Instagram reel of this) – Maisy decided strawberries were good, Sam ran and hid from everything and Spike only liked strawberries as well.
Mum had a birthday this month – in honour of this Sam was immortalised in a beautiful portrait by Snootography which hangs in pride of place next to the one of Queen Bea.
Sam made a career change, starting a new civil service role supporting Mum. Loves the culture and meetings, huge fan of being on introduction calls. When Maisy realised this desk upstairs had excellent treats and frequently toast, she asked for a part time role and splits her time supervising pawrents dependent on who has the newest delivery from Hungry Hownd.
A break through moment for our little drama llama this month (Mum may have ordered a Houndy Things gown and collar to note the attitude) – after attending physio to support Sam all year, today Maisy allowed Jem to touch her and went back to ask for more fusses. This girl makes us so proud – when given the time she needs to process things, she makes good choices. Given her history, its seeming inevitable that she will one day need the care of the JCB physio team and giving her the time now to get used to them, and learn to trust that their touch is positive will only be beneficial.
October
As the season changes, Mum and Dad get obsessed with autumnal woodland walks – generally with us wearing either Halloween coats from Houndy Things or autumnal t shirts from Blas & Co. The two main outings this month were to the Sculpture trail in the Forest of Dean, and then the slightly smaller Sculpture Trail at Forest Fawr. We do love having the Rifter – it makes for quick and easy travels, and Mum and Dad are lot more inclined to use it for ‘ventures.
Wern Isaf was a field we would frequent with Bea and friends. It occurred to Mum that Maisy had never been there, but given her love of woodland sniffs, would probably really like it. Another bittersweet moment thinking of the last trip there where Sam and Bea celebrated their first gotcha day with frens, cake and a bottle of Pol Roger for the humans, but a smile for Sam finding the muddy puddle again and just the pleasure of watching puppy fun.
Maisy made sure to keep her stealing skills sharp – Mum is obsessed with all things autumn and has an array of crochet pumpkins dotted around the house. Maisy sees soft things that are easy to pick up and have been abandoned on shelves and makes sure they know they are loved – by collecting them all and bringing them to Maisy Corner to look after.
After a fun filled few weeks, a sour end to the month as Sam had an extremely poorly paw. Many vet visits to determine if it was a break or just a bad infection and a quiet couple of weeks limited outings and lots of time in the living room and work to keep him quiet.
November
After a literal last minute (within the hour before we were due to depart) approval from the vet, we loaded the Rifter (volume of dog beds that can fit in the boot was hugely approved by Maisy who packed herself first so she wouldn’t be left behind) and crossed the bridge and headed down to Cornwall for our annual firework escape. Dad chose wonderfully – a converted granary in Egloskerry just outside Launcestion with our own private courtyard. As Sam improved we did some exploring – the beer garden of the Jamaica Inn so Mum could be a literary fan girl, lakeside and woodland walks on Bodmin Moor… Dad discovered the existence of National Trust Puppy Passports at Lanhydrock – so we collected the stamp and then added Boscastle, Trelissick and Pentire Coast path to our list. Sniffs and stamps is the way to go! Mum had heart failure near enough on the coast path but also moments of overwhelming pride and various other emotions – who would have thought a terrified big black girl from Ireland who had been passed around multiple trainers and tracks would be standing leaning into her human on a clifftop in . Cornwall taking in the sniffs, sights and sounds. Sam as usual is the adventure pup who pulls to explore new places, having Maisy discover her adventure side too is just magic. A Cornish high for both puppies was the ridiculously expensive fish and chips from Rick Steins in Padstow – a gloriously drizzly day and the Rifters tray tables in the back came in useful for a lovely family in car picnic, with Mum and Dad passing fish and chips to two eager snoots over the back seat.
November also brings another annual calendar high – celebrating Thanksgiving with some of our nearest and dearest and also turkey. Mostly turkey.
On advice from Mum, Dottie’s Mum booked a weekend visit to Wern Isaf and we delighted in showing Dottie the sniffs, our little high vis coats showing everyone where we were.
We don’t talk about the end of the month. Even though we love Dotties Mum – our pawrents abandoned us (in our own house, with Dotties Mum catering to our every whim) for 3 whole nights. Maisy had to show them the route around the park and Sam had to obligingly defend them from the whippets by activating tornado mode.
December
It took a while to forgive the abandonment but a weekend cuddling at home during a red weather warning went a long way to healing wounds.
Tis the season after all – so our other new Blas & Co T shirts have been out all month – Maisy looking particularly fetching in gonk red and black attire. We wore them for our annual Christmas movie night with Twiggy and Gracie – and met their new galgo foster sister, the beautiful Bella!
As proud GRW supporting puppies, we paid a visit to the Christmas market in Llandeilo and then continued on our covert December secret mission of taking our adopted cuddly GRW puppy toy (that has been named Puppy and repeatedly taken to be “looked after” by Maisy) to different places as part of the GRW social media advent calendar (Raglan, Dinefwr and Caerphilly castles were places we visited and were suitably bewildered by this month).
At Sam’s final physio of the month we delighted the team with our festive snoods. Maisy says she is not a Bah Humbug but also does not like the snood thank you. Sam is happy to be a reindeer if you give fusses.
The pawrents continued the Puppy Passport mission and we visited Lacock on a windy Saturday afternoon. This completed page one of the Puppy Passport and we claimed a packet of Forthglade Treats each. The Abbey and village were beautifully lit for Christmas and we loved the trees and the field we had to walk through to get to the old road. The stile however was not popular with anyone but Dad is amazing and has perfected the art of the Puppy stile lift. On the way home, Mum saw an opportunity and we took it – to visit Tredegar House garden lit up for Christmas, Sam and Maisy levels of quiet and another passport stamp added. Finishing the passport is Dads new year mission.
Our festive period was filled with visiting family and friends (and sulking that Dads family have changed their sofas the week before Christmas), sharing cheese, turkey and cuddles.
Sam and Maisy have enjoyed more adventures and new experiences than we thought this year – we’ve balanced trips to places new with cuddles on the sofa and time in our local park (Maisy’s favourite place), helping them enjoy new places but always coming back to the comfortable safety of home with their family. We hope you’ve enjoyed their year in review as much as they enjoyed experiencing it.