Stella Memorial

Stella was our first greyhound that we adopted. We got her Labor Day weekend in 1999. Wick and I had been talking about adopting a greyhound for years but we had collies at the time and didn't think we needed another dog. When we lost all of our collies to old age, we decided it was time to adopt a hound.

My daughter and I drove to Dallas to pick out our first greyhound and the whole time, Brittney kept telling me any color except black. Well Stella must have known that she had to work on Brittney to come home with us because she kept nuzzling Brittney and leaning on her. All the while Brittney was eyeing two fawn females that were cat safe. Finally Brittney said, "You know, Mom, this dog has picked me out and I think this is the one we should adopt." I asked her what happened to the any color but black but we decided that this little girl had decided that she wanted to come home with us.

She was a shy little girl that had obviously been abused in her former life. It took months, actually a couple of years for her to come completely out of her shell. She was afraid of men at first but what I always loved about her is that she wanted to trust again and always tried to give the benefit of the doubt. When she came out of her shell, what a jewel we had. Stella also ended up being my husband's favorite and she really became "his" dog.

Stella was our heart dog and the whole reason why we adopted Stanley and then my daughter adopted two greys of her own, Chester and Chelsea, that are now living with her as she attends Texas Tech. Stella unexpectedly broke her leg in November of 2004. When we did radiographs, what I feared most had happened. She had a tumor on the ulna. We opted not to amputate because she had so much arthritis in her rear that we knew she could never support herself on three legs. She did fabulously well until a few weeks ago and we made the extremely painful decision to let her go to the bridge this past week.

Here's to you Stella, you were the best ambassador for the greyhound breed that anyone could ask for.

Janet and Dr. Wick Culp