How to Rehome a Italian Greyhound

The Canadian Kennel Club says it plainly: "Gentle in nature, the Italian Greyhound can be the epitome of lapdogs." Temperament is rarely the problem. The recurring reasons owners reach the rehoming decision:

• A move or lease change. IGs are a classic condo and apartment breed, which means their owners are disproportionately renters, and housing changes drive a steady share of surrenders. The dog did nothing; the lease did. Our guide to rehoming because of a move covers the timeline math.
• A broken leg and the bill that came with it. Fine-boned IG forelegs are the breed's famous weak point, especially in young dogs leaping off furniture, and fracture repair runs into thousands. Some surrenders arrive mid-recovery.
• House-training that never quite finished. Ask any IG community: many owners find house-training this breed an ongoing management job rather than a solved problem, especially in a Canadian winter that the thin-coated dog wants no part of. Households that expected a fully reliable dog by six months get discouraged.
• Cold, and a dog built for the couch. An IG in winter is a sweater dog with strong opinions about going outside, and owners wanting a year-round outdoor companion discover the mismatch.

None of this means your dog is a problem. It means housing, budget, or expectations shifted around a gentle dog, and a careful rehoming fixes exactly that.

IG screening is sighthound screening at a smaller scale, plus physics.

1. Leash-and-fence discipline, absolutely. An Italian Greyhound is a true sighthound: a fraction of a Greyhound's size, the same chase instinct, and the same absent recall once it is running. The rule the whole sighthound community lives by applies unchanged: never off-leash outside a securely fenced area. Our Greyhound rehoming guide explains the reasoning in full, and it transfers to an IG without edits. Ask every applicant how and where they exercise their dogs, and treat "off-leash trail time" as a disqualifier, however kind the applicant.

2. A physically gentle household. Those legs are the second screen. Ask about children's ages, resident dogs, and furniture habits. A calm home with soft landings, ramps or low couches, and no boisterous large playmates is the right shape; a toddler who grabs or a big dog that body-slams is how an IG ends up in a cast. If your dog has already broken a leg, say so, because the new home needs to prevent the second one.

Fast, usually. A healthy adult IG with honest photos and a fair fee typically places within two to four weeks, because a quiet, affectionate, apartment-sized dog is close to the most requested profile in Canadian adoption. Be honest about house-training in the listing; breed-experienced adopters expect the caveat and are not scared off by it, and the ones who are scared off were the wrong home. A dog recovering from a fracture takes longer because the right home has to be financially and physically ready; put the medical picture in the listing and let it screen for you. If a move is forcing the timeline, start the moment the move becomes real, not the week the truck comes.

IG disclosure is short, and two items on it matter more than everything else combined.

• Fracture history, with the vet record. Any break, the repair, and what the vet said about the recovered leg. No shame in it; it is the breed's signature injury. The new home needs it to prevent a repeat.
• House-training, truthfully. The single most tempting item to soften and the single most common reason an IG placement bounces. Describe the real routine: how reliable, what setup you use, what winter does to it. The home that reads the honest version and applies anyway is the home that keeps the dog.
• Teeth. IG dental disease is breed-typical; share the last dental and the state of the mouth.
• Winter setup. What the dog wears and will tolerate, and send the sweaters along with the dog.
• Behaviour around cats and small animals. An IG is small, but it is still a sighthound; describe what yours does when something runs.

Charge a real rehoming fee. IGs are an expensive, elegant, easily transported breed, which makes a free listing a magnet for resellers and impulse takers. A fee of a few hundred dollars for a healthy adult is normal in Canada (this is a directional range, not a fixed rule), paired with a vet reference and a meeting at your home or theirs. For a dog with fracture-repair costs behind it or dental work ahead, weighting the screening toward a financially ready home matters more than the fee amount. You can donate the fee to a sighthound rescue afterward if you would rather not keep it.