For racing greyhound owners, their dogs are their pride and joy. Owner and Greyhound Ambassador Jayne Conway reflects on the life of one special greyhound who has made a lasting impact on her life and whose adventures in retirement have touched the hearts of many.

“An owner’s blog isn’t an easy thing to write when there’s so much to say about so many loved, cherished and admired dogs. But I’m narrowing this down to one dog, Alarming Alan, the love of my life, the apple of my eye and the sunshine in my day.

We bought Alan just before his 2nd birthday for what was for us an eye-watering amount of money and we watched him mess up every race he ran for quite a few weeks. There was a little voice inside me saying ‘no wonder he was for sale, they saw you coming’. But then we watched him learning his craft, and learn it he did. We watched him avoiding all the trouble, looking for the gaps, going for those gaps unhindered and winning from off the pace in the most jaw-dropping way. Alan didn’t achieve any open race wins, usually through bad fortune because he found himself up against a superstar, but also because he fractured a hock in an open race and all that mitigated against him achieving his full potential. That didn’t stop me loving every minute of his racing, as did Alan.

The hock fracturewasn’t serious and he got the best of veterinary treatment enabling him to come back into racing, albeit focussing on mainly graded racing. He was still an absolute joy to watch. Eventually Alan went to race at Swindon when we moved to the town. He was lucky enough to be trained by Kevin Hutton who recently described him as one of the nicest dogs he’s ever had in the kennel. By this time Alan’s track craft was legendary and the old dog men used to watch him and discuss his race tactics. Overhearing this talk really did my pride an awful lot of good; Alan may not have been competing in the St Leger but he was being talked about as if he was.

When Alan was 5 and a half we celebrated his 100th British race by sponsoring his race at Swindon. This was a particularly poignant event as my family were there and it was the day after my brother’s funeral. Alan dropped a gracilis coming out of the boxes and struggled to get round. I’ll be perfectly honest and say that to date it was the most distressing event of our ownership of him. Of course he was fine when he stopped running and came to join the trophy presentation. The trainer of the winning dog was Terry Atkins and Terry remembered Alan racing at Oxford. He said that Alan was such an exciting dog to watch and of course he was right, but Alan’s racing days were now over.

Alan was given a few weeks in kennels to recuperate and then he came home. We didn’t know how he would get on given that we had not only two other greyhounds, but also a rather irascible, three-legged Jack Russell. We needn’t have worried; he took to home life like a duck to water, very quickly understanding who the boss was and it wasn’t him! A few days after he arrived he had the temerity to get on the sofa that was being occupied by the Jack Russell. The ball of three-legged fury had Alan leaping off the sofa, hurdling the coffee table and smashing our first ever open race trophy!

I took him to the Great Greyhound Gathering at Nottingham where he came 2nd in his age class, not bad for a black dog. Then he went to the Perry Barr RGT show where he won Champion Dog, but Alan went on to greater things. He became an integral part of fundraising at Towcester and helped to raise thousands of pounds for the retiring dogs as well as promoting greyhounds as pets. But better than that, because Towcester were quite happy to have him there, mingling with the racegoers, I was able to engage people in what it is to own a racing greyhound. Children cuddled him and posed for pictures, as did adults. He went to the 2017 Derby final and behaved like a perfect gentleman throughout. Steve Nash took some beautiful photos of him. He even became a stooge dog for a local dog behaviourist and she took him on several consultations with nervous, anxious or sometimes aggressive dogs. Alan was a star!

We have another greyhound, a bitch called Alarming Jacks who had a litter of really quite good dogs. In an act of reckless sentimentality, we had her and Alan produce a litter. There are nine not-so-little ‘Alarmings’ now that are all looking stunning and we are very much looking forward to their appearance on the track. What is so lovely about it is that the three dogs of the litter are the living image of their father.

But nothing lasts forever. Last week, after a spell of lameness that didn’t seem to be improving we took him to the vet for an x-ray. My very worst fears were confirmed, Alan has bone cancer and the prognosis is poor. We aren’t going to put him through any painful procedures when the cancer will undoubtedly already be elsewhere in his body. Today is the 7th January 2019, the vet is coming out to our house on the 15th to help Alan embark on his last great adventure.

Obviously this is the most terrible thing to write about, my lovely precious boy will soon not be with us, but if there was anything I could say to him it would be ‘thank you’. Thank you for everything you have done, thank you for being there to help me promote greyhounds as the wonderful dogs they are, thank you for being my precious boy, the love of my life, the apple of my eye and the sunshine in my day. You have been the greatest joy to watch and the greatest privilege to own.”