400 grey hounds walk onto a beach…
The Rehoboth Beach Convention Center is mobbed with greyhounds, hundreds of them swaddled in bright fleece jackets to protect their chilly little bones from the wind. As I push through the doors, I’m ensnared in a traffic jam of, a tangle of leashes and butt-sniffing, the sound of claws clattering on the epoxy floor. An older woman with a platinum-blond coif dances her fake nails along the neck of a stranger’s dog.
The pastor, a white-haired woman wearing an animal-print stole, stands to give the blessing, her back to the encroaching tide. As she speaks about “the sea, vast and spacious, teeming with creatures beyond number,” the speakers flash neon colors like a hot tub, and the moon backlights the clouds. The event’s climax is odd: The pastor invites the “rooing” to begin. In response, a couple of humans begin to howl and a choir of dogs join them.
Among this crowd, the appetite for puppies is weak. Greyhound puppies are broadly maligned, considered nettlesome and destructive pets. “Velociraptors,” “land sharks,” “proper little hellions,” and “prone to using the furniture as a trampoline” are several of the descriptions I heard. In greyhound world, the retired racer is king: mellow, housebroken, with a full set of teeth.
The boardwalk’s shoulders are clotted with spectators, dogless families filming the odd procession on their phones. Children are clapping, and an older couple in a pedicab is trapped, unable to part the sea of hounds. “This is a hoot,” the guy says. One dog peers into the open door of a toy store, threatening to lunge at a stuffed rabbit, while a mob of greyhounds sniffs at the French toast and Benedicts that unfortunate boardwalk brunchers warily guard.
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