...........we got back to the house and everything seemed fine until Luna walked into the lounge where Aragon was on one of the sofas, he growled a little at her and she went back to the kitchen (this happened frequently over the first week or so). Jake slept downstairs with the dogs for the first 2 weeks as we didn't want them having a fight.
We walked them around our housing estate and surrounding roads for the first week or so, then we went to a local recreation ground. Luna was quite happy to trot around on her long lead whilst Aragon had a run off lead and we noticed that she'd follow Aragon everywhere, sniffing where he sniffed so it was looking good for her re-call training (Aragon was a stray when we adopted him and Shaggy, our other lurcher had helped us a lot with his re-call as they'd bonded and he was such a good boy with his re-call).
One night we went to the field, but there were men playing football in the adjacent field and Luna refused to enter the field because she could hear their shouting. She hates loud noises, large vehicles, shouting, even Aragon when he barks at cats (she nipped him on the bottom one day as we were about to go out of the front door for a walk and he saw a cat in the front garden) so we know that this is something we need to work on. I badly wanted to see how she was off lead, but having been told that her re-call was really bad I didn't want to risk it so I started looking at hiring a secure field. Then I saw someone had posted on Facebook that they needed walkers to walk their rescue greyhounds in exchange for free use of their secure field. So Aragon and I went to check it out (it would've been too much for Luna) leaving Jake to take Luna out for her walk on her own. I received a text from Jake saying that Luna had zero confidence without Aragon and freaked out at everything so he had to cut the walk short. When we got home both dogs went nuts over each other as they were so happy to be back together.
We decided that we'd take them to a local farm that has an almost secure field to see how Luna was with her re-call. She amazed us, we took lots of cheese to bribe her to come back and she was a star. Seeing them run around together was wonderful, and as I'd hoped she followed Aragon everywhere (there is a video of her first time off lead on Holbrook page).
We put her back on the lead to walk up the track to adjoining fields, letting her off when we got there. Lots of cheese later we neared the last field where we met a lady with her young son and spaniel. Aragon had a run with her dog and Luna decided that she needed a belly rub so she went up to the boy and demanded that he gave her one.
We still have to work through a few problems, she's got very sensitive hearing and barks when she hears car doors and people in the street when we're at home. She also wakes herself up sometimes with a start and starts barking (maybe bad dreams from her previous life). Sometimes she sets Aragon off and we have two dogs to calm down, but I'm sure that as she relaxes more she'll learn that not everything she hears will hurt her.
To finish up, it's been an interesting six weeks since we adopted Luna (I should say since she adopted us), but we couldn't imagine life without her now. They still have the odd squabble, nothing serious, still just setting their boundaries, but they do really seem to love each other. Luna is quite demanding with her belly rubs, which she loves and she can be a real madam, laying in doorways causing Aragon to bark as he's too scared to go around her. They're great off lead together and have started playing and chasing each other around the fields. They even chase each other in and out of the house, to the end of the garden and back again.
luna has become much friendlier with strangers that we meet when out walking, even accepting treats and belly rubs from them. In fact she's become almost too confident, Aragon has a habit of running up to people walking their dogs and woofing at them to play. Luna now follows him doing the same thing, showing no fear of the people walking their dogs. Gotta go now, Aragon's demanding his walk and Luna's telling him off, it's quite comical really.
I'll write little updates if anyone would like to follow what happens next, I'd like to thank everyone at Holbrook for the great job they do in caring for these poor abandoned animals. Luna's story proves that even dogs with terrible backgrounds can blossom into confident, loving members of the right family.