The "Lucky" Grandson...

There are two things a little boy is “lucky” to have. A loving grandpa and his first dog. Or in my case a loving grandpa and his first 100 dogs...As a boy I spent a lot of time with my grandpa. As far back as I can remember, all the way to my mid teens, my grandpa raised greyhounds. It was his livelihood and almost every weekend I got to be a part of that. These dogs were athletes, and were treated as such. Like the athletes that they were, they had a seven acre training ground fully equipped with multiple gated runs, heated kennels, a mini racing track, barn with feeding area (a full cafeteria size kitchen that served 2 daily meals of beef stew with veggies), and a lot of room to roam. My grandpa treated every dog with the love and respect that any dog owner would give his long lasting companion. Only they weren't his dogs, he was only the trainer. These were racing greyhounds, and his job was to get them ready to race. Now if you know anything about greyhounds, you would know that they are not in any way an aggressive dog. In fact they are very gentle, and I would suggest to anyone to adopt a retired racer. You will not be sorry. But they do love to chase...Especially rabbits. Now let me stop all you PETA freaks right now. This is not a story with a political agenda and I'm not condoning the training methods that were used, it's truly just a story of a boy and his grandpa. And furthermore don't think if I picked you up from one of your naked photo shoots and dropped you off in Antarctica with a hunting knife and a fur coat, that I wouldn't find you later all bundled up chomping on a seal sandwich. So back to the rabbits. There was a very simple training method. It would start with a trip to the feed store where I would get to help pick out a dozen or so jack rabbits. And to spare all the particulars, yes a chase would ensue that would end the life of thumper and his 11 other forest friends(and just to clarify the dogs were never the executioner, again they were in it for the chase). Like Clarice and her silence of the lambs, I had my own feelings about the velveteen slaughter, but it was how they trained the dogs. So this is all really just back story for my tale (or tail if I wanted to stay on theme).

So sometime around the mid 80's two things started happening that sparked my young entrepreneurial mind. Only years later did I truly understand how ridiculous my idea was, but I'll never forget the way my grandpa dignified my attempt to supplement his now lacking income from the greyhound industry...

So these animal rights activists started attacking the greyhound industry for their training methods, which in turn, years later put my grandpa out of business. But at the same time, when he was just beginning to feel the financial burden of “Watership Down”, I noticed a fad at school that would save the day. And to put this all in perspective for you the reader, I was about 11 or 12, 5th or 6th grade. Almost every kid I knew had a colored, lucky rabbits foot on there backpack or belt loop. (If your my age you can't deny you owned one in the eighties). So here was my somewhat morbid scheme. Not only could we train greyhounds, but we could sell rabbits feet to make up for the loses (remember that this was 5th grade economics and we did have an abundance of rabbits feet).

I'll never forget pitching this idea to my grandpa telling him, we were selling “luck”, and I'll never forget his response...

With just enough laughter not to elicit a feeling of stupidity on my part, my grandpa said, “Having a rabbit's foot doesn't necessarily make you lucky, most of the rabbits we get have four, and look where it got them.”


Miss you very much, grandpa...