Seymour’s Story

Seymour is our pet and beloved family member.  That makes him special to us, and many who have known him.  But he has also had the privilege of being a pioneer, and an example of what the magnificent Greyhound breed can be if we develop their natural talents to help others.

Like most greyhounds, his first job was as a professional athlete.  He raced 39 times, mostly in Corpus Christi, Texas.  He reached the top level of racing, and had 11 win, place or show finishes.  He best times were very good; his consistency? — not so much.  His racing career ended with a broken right hock, a relatively common racing injury, but it merely launched him into his second career as an ambassador for greyhound adoption.

Though he raced mostly in Corpus Christi, Seymour somehow found his way to Mobile, AL, and from there was inducted into the prison training program at Lakeland Correctional in Coldwater Michigan.  We have his journal from there, and we quickly grew convinced that he liked his trainer there.  He still sleeps under the ‘blankie’ that came with him from Coldwater.  After his prison stay, he was still not adopted and was transported and kept in a local jail in Crystal River, FL.  It was from there that he was delivered to us in Sarasota by Goldcoast Greyhound Adoptions.

Nee H. G. Anubis, we renamed him to SeeMore, in honor of his thousands of years of breeding as a sighthound.  The name quickly morphed into Seymour, who started to demonstrate an unusual combination of personality traits.   Seymour has in general, a very laid back and neutral personality, but somehow turns into a great socializer in key situations, and a perfect ambassador for the breed.

He was such a good (and easy) dog that we decided to involve him in greyhound adoption events.  He immediately became a ‘greeter dog’ at meet ‘n greet events, reaching out to passersby and leaning into them to invite them in.  We decided we could open a Sarasota chapter of Goldcoast Greyhound Adoptions with Seymour as our mascot dog.  We observed that he always behaved in accordance to his surroundings.

We became the first fosters in the area for the organization.  Well, we can say we were the fosters, but Seymour did 90% of the teaching.  Again, he was the perfect host dog — never aggressive, not submissive, and always willing to lead and to teach.  Since then, we have had somewhere between 65 and 90 fosters through our home, some for as little as a day, and some for as long as six months.  We never had a single relationship issue with Seymour and any of those dogs, whether it was one at a time, or multiple dogs.

Our daughter decided to use Seymour as a therapy dog while she was living with us.  Seymour passed the tests with no further training and no fails and became a TDI therapy dog.  We could see some of the same traits in him years later when we took him to a meeting at the Zephyrhills prison, where he made a call at their palliative care facility during our presentation day.

Our first granddaughter, Alina, grew up with us for her first 19 months.  She adored Seymour, who was very good with her.  Her first word was ‘dog’, and the first place she crawled was across the room to Seymour to lay down on him.  The first word she ever said in her sleep was ‘Seymour’.  He was always 100% trustworthy with children.

Since Seymour was prison-trained, we decided to get involved in such a program, and volunteered.  Seeing the effect on inmates (women in the first case) had a strong impact on us.  Seymour was at home in the prison, and worked with the other dogs.  We saw an opportunity for him to work with the new trainer recruits, and it worked beautifully as he could actually help them to learn and gain confidence faster.  We soon found ourselves operating that program and expanding it to advanced training to prepare the dogs for working with veterans with PTSD.  Seymour learned some of those commands, but more importantly started to master the thing that could not be done in prison — public access training.  When the advanced dogs came out, it was Seymour who was ready to lead them through supermarkets, restaurants, airports, malls, and up and down escalators and elevators.  He always knew when he was working, even though you can see that part of him would rather go up and lean on friendly people.  If you have ever seen a stream of greyhounds walking through public places on the Florida gulf coast, the odds are that Seymour was at the front of the line.

More recently, Seymour co-founded the Greyhound Advancement Center with us.  He travels every week to our Level 6 mens’ prison in Hardee County to help with the training.  Again, he works primarily with beginners, but all the trainers like to have a turn with him.  Seymour is also our partner in meetings, ‘sales calls’, and fund-raising events including speaking engagements, dog and greyhound ‘trade shows, etc.  He was comfortable in virtually any setting, thus he was with us constantly.  And he was a wonderful living demonstration of what a greyhound can be.

Seymour always had a calming, yet uplifting effect on people.  Those are not unusual characteristics in greyhounds, which is what makes them so effective for those with PTSD, autism, anxiety and other psychological issues.  What made Seymour stand out was his ability to assess situations, and consistently act appropriately.  Many greys have personalities tending in these directions, and more and more are learning obedience.  Many dogs can obey commands, but with that as his base knowledge, Seymour learned to assess situations and figure out how to behave with few or no cues.  Others have attested that if we leave him with them, he continues that behavior.  That is consistent with greyhounds’ training since birth.

Joanne and Ken (Co-founders of Greyhound Advancement Center)