She's a Grande Old Birthday Dame!

September 20, 1995 was the day a certain black brindle hound was born in a litter of nine greyhounds. She was the only female in the entire litter. She went on to race for a while before retiring to be a brood mama to twelve puppies, born in two different litters.

The first litter produced the divine Miss Blueberry who also lives here with us.



It also produced Launchie Girl who currently resides in South Carolina.



There was also Peabody who as far as I know, also resides in South Carolina.



The second litter produced nine puppies, most living in Colorado, as far as I know. There was a blue male, a black male, a brindle male, a blue female, two red females, and three brindle females. These include Callista.



Lola is also one of her daughters.



So, after she had all of these beautiful puppies, it was time for Lilac to retire. She traveled to central Illinois on a hauler from Kansas one cold day in January of 2002. Her daughter, Blueberry, also traveled with her and a group of other greyhounds on their way to the cushy life of retirement.

Initially, I was supposed to foster her daughter; however, there was a foster family there who were interested in fostering a hound to keep. I told the woman in charge that it didn’t matter one bit to me if they took the blue brindle girl home. It would keep me from succumbing to a weakness to keep her. I turned to look at the dogs in crates behind me and said “That little old lady dog can come home with me. It’s about time she had a soft place to lay down!”

I opened the crate and clipped on her leash, then let her hop out. She reached her head up around my neck and gave a squeeze. It was like being hugged. People there that night said she’d never leave my house, but I laughed and told them that she was simply “foster number eighteen.”

The big adoption event that the dogs had been brought in for came and went. Every dog was adopted except for one. That dog would be Lilac. Perhaps it was her age, or maybe her coloring, or she just wasn’t what people had been looking for. Whatever the reason, she stayed here as a foster until the beginning of May that year.

In March, we’d had a caper known as “The Big Easter Candy Heist.” This involved Lilac using her powers of stealth to steal a carefully hidden bag of Easter candy from our bedroom and hide it behind our sofa in what we referred to as Lilac’s Fortress of Stealth. She would lay back there for hours, perfectly content in her little cave, something no other greyhound has done here before or since. She kept the candy hidden back there until my husband and I left to go run some errands. We returned to find that she’d corrupted Treat and Hawk into becoming candy hounds as well. There were candy bags, little pieces of foil and mass destruction spread all over our living room. Somehow, with that event, she became cool with Treat and Hawk. I also realized that I adored her and her crazy antics. She was always stealing something. I accepted in my heart that she wasn’t going anywhere and had decided we were her home. About a month later my husband accepted it as well and told me that if I wanted, I could pay her adoption fee in May as my birthday present.

I have never had a moment of regret that Lilac came to be our Grande dame. She is our sweetheart and love bug. I can’t imagine not having shared the journey of her life with her. Today she turns fourteen years old and she is as spry as the day we got her. She has had remarkably good health, aside from SLO and our scary event on Thursday, and we consider ourselves very lucky for that. My husband believes that she will outlive us all! I pray that will be so.

Happy Birthday, Lilac, and many happy returns!