Greyhound empathy.

My dad and his wife adopt greyhounds, ex-racers who have had difficult lives being treated not as dogs but rather as money-earning machines. They thus know little of acting as or even just being a dog, as you and I might think of a dog, especially if they are older when they retire. (The first was about six when my parents took her, and she had no idea how to climb stairs. Be held on a leash. Go on a walk.)

Despite having been shown little or no kindness during their racing days, they generally become sweet, docile, and loving pets (and not too physically demanding, either – the motto of "world's fastest coach potato" certainly fits), but they can also be nervous and jittery in continued response to the horrible treatment they received in the past, even when retired into loving homes. They can thus require a lot of patience and attention, which my parents have in spades for theirs.

(As an aside, over Easter lunch with Gilles and his family, we were talking about pet names, and a few people agreed that they weren't enamored of terms like "princess" for little girls. Somebody asked me if my parents had ever called me or my sisters that. "No, " I replied, but had to add "– although my dad calls his greyhounds his princesses.")

On the phone this weekend, my dad's wife told me that while she had been sleeping the night before, she heard my dad saying, "Wake up. Wake up. You have to wake up." Sali the greyhound – pardon; the princess – had been on the bed with them. She had peed. It had soaked through the duvet and the sheets but hadn't absorbed into the mattress. My dad had learned of the happening by rolling into it.

This was just a detail in a longer tale that was being told, so she moved on with that after I'd expressed the appropriate horror and disgust. But I got the full story from my dad when she passed the phone over to him. My sister, baby in tow, had been spending a few days with them. Sali was horrendously resentful and jealous. She wouldn't go into the living room if the baby was there. Even if it weren't, she wouldn't take her usual place on the couch next to my dad. Towards the end of the visit, the curious incident of the dog in the night-time (great book, by the way) happened.

Message sent.

I hear you, Sali. It's not quite the same type of jealousy, and I'm not quite wetting someone else's bed, but I hear you.

the usual place on the couch.