Greetings Greyhound Lovers!
You’ve been asking for a long time, and it’s finally time to get you all caught up on what’s been going on with this little adoption group we love so much. Here’s your update on incoming greyhounds and changes that have to happen in order to make this all work. We’ve been working hard for a couple of years now on a whole bunch of things and with the border open, along with travel restrictions becoming more flexible – we’re ready to spill the beans.
As some of you know we’ve been placing absolutely beautiful sighthounds and sighthound mixes into incredibly wonderful homes since the year 2000. We initially came together to assist with the placement of dogs from a little racetrack in Sylvan Lake, Alberta – those pups still have huge places in our hearts… This little Canadian track eventually did shut down and we started welcoming more and more wonderful racers from the USA! Beautiful athletes from Kansas, Florida, Texas, West Virginia and more! Although we have expanded the amount of adorable noodle-horse immigrants that we’ve taken in over the years, we have always made sure we had room to take in our beloved local beauties when they needed us. Stunning match racing dogs, cuddly coyote hunting dogs, adorable sighthound mixes and we’ve always worked so hard to help families who have run into situations where they have to make the heartbreaking decision to find their beloved pets a new home – this will never change! We take the “Canadian” in our name very seriously!
In 2018 Florida’s citizens voted to end Greyhound Racing by 2020 in their state, bringing an end to a majority of the tracks still operating in North America. Greyhound racing in the USA had been dwindling for years and it was getting harder and harder to get dogs this far north, but thanks to amazing volunteers on both sides of the border we kept going further and further to welcome new Canadians into amazing families. We were ready to assist with the placement of all of these dogs that were going to have to retire early. That was of course until in early 2020 COVID-19 struck North America the border between Canada and USA was closed, leaving us stuck on this side and unable to help. No worries though, the incredible greyhound community stepped up and made things happen. The NGA and amazing adoption groups south of the border made sure that all the dogs were well taken care of and found amazing homes.
Since that day we have been looking into other places that would love to have their local beauties become Canadian Citizens…we have so many wonderful families waiting to add a skinny hound to their home and we are committed to making this happen.
While there are a few tracks still in operation in North America, most of them are on the opposite side of the continent from us, and there are more than enough wonderful groups in those areas to place those dogs. Moving hounds this far northwest with more than enough wonderful homes available in the area they are in, wasn’t in those pups best interest so we started looking overseas. There are lots of beautiful retired racers in need of placement in countries like Ireland and Australia and we’ve been speaking with amazing volunteers in both these countries about the possibility of welcoming these beautiful pups to Canada. We have so many wonderful families who have been waiting so long to welcome a retired racer into their home.
The great news is that NCGL will be welcoming both Irish and Australian greyhounds to Canada!
However, the reality of this is that costs associated with flying these dogs into Canada are extremely high, especially now with all of the supply issues our world is currently experiencing. In response to this, we will have to raise the adoption fee for these overseas dogs to $2200 CDN. This is the lowest we feel we can go at this time while still maintaining a responsible amount of funds to take care of dogs in our care, dogs that may come back to us and dogs that may need us.
The reality of this adoption fee increase is that we are now covering 100% of the costs of getting these pups to North America, the adoption fee increase has nothing to do with vet care or the actual pups, it’s to help cover the huge expense of flying them to Canada. Covid has left the costs of shipping and travel extremely high (in most cases, over double the cost of pre-covid) and even with this new fee, we are still not covering the base cost of getting these wonderful pups here and settled into loving homes. We are working extremely hard to get these costs and adoption fees down wherever we can, and are hoping that when everything in the world starts to stabilize we’ll find a more cost efficient method of getting these pups into your homes. We’re also hoping with the help of amazing volunteers we can start doing some more fundraising to help offset some of these costs and bring that adoption fee down.
We are not, and have never been in this to make money, and this was an extremely difficult decision for us. We’ve managed to maintain a very low adoption fee for the last 20+ years, but also know that if we didn’t make this change, we aren’t being responsible to the pups we bring in and the pups that are out there. The reality is that we’re a very small (but awesome!) organization and most of the dogs that we adopt out are at a loss. We’ve managed to make this work with the help of amazing vets, donors and all of you incredible people out there, but this is a huge financial undertaking for us and we are dedicated to getting amazing pups into loving Canadian homes!
Some people may question that if the costs of getting these pups are so high, why bother? The simple answer is because we were asked too. These pups need homes and we have a ton of wonderful Canadian families that have that loving home. NCGL is a sighthound adoption group and will always be here for any sighthound that needs us – whether it be a cute boxer/greyhound cross from Alberta who needs a new home because she won’t stop chasing cattle or some beautiful racing dogs from overseas. If we can help these pups by assisting in finding them loving forever families, we always will.
For your adoption fee you will welcome an absolutely stunning purebred retired racing dog into your family. These pups are fully vetted, microchipped, teeth cleaned and have been bred and raised with so much love by their owners and trainers. You can usually trace their lines back over 100 years and even in some cases, watch their old races online. Most of all you’re helping with the fees associated with flying these beauties to Canada. These are amazing dogs and we’re so proud to be part of this incredible program to bring these beauties to Canada, we hope you are too!
That being said, the adoption fee for our local pups will remain the same at this time. While our adoption fee never covers the costs associated with getting these local pups ready for adoption, we’ll make it work with the support of our amazing adopters, volunteers, donors, vets and fosters. We will always have a place for our beautiful local pups and hope that with a steady source of hounds coming to us, we’ll be able to help even more. If you’re happy waiting for a local dog we are overjoyed to work with you. That option will always be there. We take in local dogs at a very unpredictable rate… sometimes we pull 25+ in in under a month, sometimes we only see 6 a year. NCGL needs sighthounds to keep doing what we do, and we’re so excited to have pups come into our care on a more regular and predictable timeline.
If you’re happy to wait for one of our local beauties nothing will change – this will however give people who have been waiting for a retired racer a chance to bring one home 
We hope you understand and will move forward with us on this new chapter. If you’re an approved adopter or have an application in and want to welcome one of these pups into your family please contact us at adopt@ncgl.ca if you’re in Alberta or Saskatchewan and ncglfoster@outlook.com if you’re a resident of British Columbia. If you haven’t applied yet and are interested, please fill out an application on our website and send it back so we can get you on that approved list ASAP! As soon as we have enough approved adopters, we’ll make arrangements to bring in some beautiful racers ready to spend a long and loving wonderful life with you.
We’re also in need of some amazing foster homes as we get this ball rolling again. If you’re interested in becoming an NCGL foster please reach out to the above mentioned emails – all expenses are covered, all you have to do is love that pup and teach them the ropes until they find their forever family.
Thank you so much for keeping our amazing little adoption group going for 22 years, we appreciate and thank every single one of you who have supported us for so long and hope you’re with us moving forward. We’ve been missing those Racers, and know you do too
If you have any questions or concerns, please feel free to contact us and we are more than happy to chat with you!
