CENTRE COUNTY — April was National Adopt-a-Greyhound Month, and Nittany Greyhounds had a series of events set up to connect retired racing Greyhounds with forever families.
Nittany Greyhounds was founded by Elaine and Joe Skidel. After the Skidels adopted their first Greyhound, Lily, they fell in love with the breed. After owning Lily and seeing how she had a few health-related issues, they decided they wanted to start a small kennel.
“Our mission is to rehome retired racing greyhounds when they finish their athletic careers at the tracks,” Ellen Ashton Brenner, a board member and kennel manager at Nittany Greyhounds, said.
During the month of April, Nittany Greyhounds hosted a series of meet-and-greets for their available dogs. Although visitors could not adopt dogs there, they had the opportunity to meet the dogs and see if they connected with any of them.
“What we try to do at those meet and greets is educate people on why greyhounds make great pets, and also to dispel some of the myths about greyhounds, like they’re hyper, which they’re not, and people can meet available dogs,” said Ashton Brenner.
Nittany Greyhounds even hosted a large event from Thursday, April 24, through Sunday, April 27, “Greyhounds in Gettysburg,” which is the kennels biggest fundraiser of the year.
The event featured a series of events for Greyhound owners, fans or people interested in adopting a Greyhound in the future. The event included different speakers to help educate audiences on different things. However, they will also have other fun events for attendees to participate in.
“We actually took it over eight or 10 years ago from another group and we’ve just expanded it to have vendors, anything Greyhound-related. There are vendors there, and even non-Greyhound-related vendors,” Ashton Brenner said.
Joan Parker spoke on the second day of the event on the history of Greyhounds. Along with this, she dove into the topic of genome research of the origin of the breed.
One of the other activities held was an Art Workshop with Linda K. Evans. Evans led attendees to create a piece of Greyhound-related art that they were able to frame and bring home with them.
While National Adopt-A-Greyhound Month is over, there are still opportunities to bring one of these couch potatoes in training into adoptive homes.
For those interested in adopting from Nittany Greyhounds, there is an application that needs to be filled out. You can access this via nittanygreys.org or you can come into their office at 30 Tld Circle, Port Matilda, and pick up a paper copy.
After the application is approved, the potential families are invited into the kennel to meet the Greyhounds they have available.
“Every adoption is done on a trial basis. If you take a dog home and decide ‘this isn’t the right dog for me’ or ‘I really don’t want a dog at this time,’ we’ll always take a dog back and try to get you another one,” said Ashton Brenner.
