It's A Small Greyhound World

On our after-dinner walk tonight, we stopped at a local grocery store. I waited outside with Jackson while Stacy went in to shop.

Jackson is a stunning brindle, black and beige in a tiger-stripe pattern. He drew his usual crowd. People want to pet him, and that leads to questions about greyhounds and adoption. It's part of the fun.

Two women walking by were especially interested. "He looks like Chatter," one of them said. She stopped and petted Jackson. She asked me how long I'd had Jackson - a week, I said. Then she asked me what his name had been.

That confused me. Most people want to know his name now, but no one had ever asked about his racing name. That's ancient history. "Well, his name's Jackson," I said, "but he was JG Bacardi."

The two women stared at each other, stunned. "Chatter!" they shouted. Turns out we had bumped into Sarah, Jackson's first foster mom. He went straight from the track to her home. Two fosters later, he's with us for good. And, based on how well he's doing, Sarah did a great job at a critical time in his life.

She loved him up, and told us she would be happy to walk him for us anytime. She lives just three blocks away from us. We told her she can visit anytime, and we thanked her for the great job she did. Especially stairs - he's fearless, up and down like a mountain climber.

There are a couple of hundred thousand people in Richmond, and the surrounding counties bring the Richmond metro population to over a million. Jackson could have ended up anywhere in that crowd. Amazingly, he ended up three blocks from his first foster mom.