Ron’s Happily Homed Story

Ron (No Honour Ron) was not interested in racing at all. He had four races in 2022-23 and came 6th every time. So, his trainer decided Ron didn’t want to race and would help Ron to have an early retirement. Ron came to the kennels of Home Run Hounds in July 2024 on the search for his forever home, hoping it wouldn’t be too long until his forever family came to choose him for adoption.  

Ron found the transition from leaving the racing kennels to go to the homing kennels quite difficult. He would hide at the back of the kennel and struggled to interact with new people as he missed his previous kennels so much. After some dedicated time from the kennel staff and volunteers, Ron learnt to trust them and enjoyed his walks around the fields and paddocks.  

When he was out and about in villages and towns, he preferred quiet walking tracks with few people as then he could focus on enjoying the walk and new smells. Sometimes the very shy, non-racers don’t have a high prey-drive so one of the volunteers took him home to test with her 3 cats. Ron took no notice of them, so they contacted Rachel who had been on the “cat friendly” waiting list for a little while.  

Rachel came and met Ron and felt she had the patience to help him gain his confidence. She took him home firstly on HRH’s foster2adopt scheme, then after a couple of weeks, adopted him. It’s not been plain sailing and there have been times when Ron has been quite worried about certain new things in the home environment. However, Rachel has persevered and says the rewards are enormous!

“We have reached three months since Ron came home; I thought it would be nice to share his journey; especially as he’s been almost textbook with the 3-3-3 settling in schedule – at the three months mark he’s FINALLY getting more comfortable in the house. Looking back, as expected Ron’s first days were very subdued. He didn’t know where to sleep and only ate at night. Thankfully we’re blessed with fields to walk in and he did perk up outside. 

I was less prepared for the time between 3 days to 3 weeks when Ron had a MASSIVE crisis of confidence. He was so down and didn’t want to do anything; didn’t eat much, wouldn’t leave the house (or even his bed), then wouldn’t go back in. Wouldn’t get in the car, wouldn’t get out again. You get the idea. I wondered if he would ever settle in. 

Like clockwork, at three weeks he got his basics back; eating better and jumping in the car. Since then, it’s been little breakthroughs, which are so lovely to see. My absolute favourite was seeing him play for the first time in the snow. I’d read that greys don’t much like cold weather, but he loved it! Bouncing around and making doggy snow angels. Fast forward to three months exactly and I caught him roaching while I work! He waits eagerly for his dinner, gets excited to play on our walks and responds (occasionally) to his name …. or maybe just the promise of a treat.  

I’m so pleased I persevered with Ron. I ask a lot of him; a new routine, living with two cats and coming everywhere with me, but he’s the sweetest boy and I hope he’s happy with his choice of retirement home.”