So you’ve decided you’d like to adopt a dog from GAL – that’s great news!

Although there is no such thing as a perfect dog or a perfect home, GAL will always endeavour to find the right dog for the right home. Our fostering and rehoming process has been designed to give us the best possible chance of matching you up with the right dog for you and your family, and to give every GAL dog the best possible chance to find a suitable forever home.

GAL incoming dogs, mainly greyhounds or lurchers, are received either from trainers direct or as welfare cases, usually following a call to our Helpline. We try to find out as much information as possible about the dog at this stage, including whether they’ve been neutered, chipped, their medical history and any known behaviours such as toilet training, reactivity, etc.

Here at GAL, we don’t have kennels - we place all our hounds into foster homes. We fully support our fosterers with any issues and concerns they may have about the dogs in their care. Our fosterers do amazing work, welcoming dogs into their homes. This gives the dogs time to be introduced to living in a house and getting ready for their forever home.

While they’re in a foster home, we speak to our fosterers regularly and receive weekly updates about our dogs awaiting adoption. Regular updates help us get to know their dog’s personalities and assess the type of home they would be best suited to. We assess factors such as the dog’s temperament, likes and dislikes, whether they’re comfortable with stairs, if they’re cat-friendly and OK with small dogs. 

We will also assess if they might be suitable for homing with another dog, children, and if they need any additional support or indeed when they are ready for rehoming.

All of our dogs get medical checkups, and they are chipped and neutered before they are rehomed.

We aren't able to rehome our hounds to homes where young children under the age of 8 live or visit frequently.

Greyhounds and lurchers are generally large, bouncy dogs. Although many are great with children, they don't always know their own strength and size, and small children can easily be knocked over or hurt by accident.

Greyhounds and lurchers do make excellent family pets and we are happy to discuss adoption and help you adopt a GAL hound with children over the age of 8.

We don't have any way to test if our hounds are cat/small animal friendly, and so we aren't able to place them in a home where small animals are free to run about.

Sighthounds commonly have a high prey drive, it's one of their characteristics.

Greyhounds in particular are bred and trained to chase small fluffy lures and having a small bird flying about, or a small animal running about can, sadly, lead to tragedy and the loss of a loved pet.

Once you’re approved, we’ll welcome you to Team GAL and you’ll be added to our waiting list, and we will start to assess the dogs we currently have waiting for a home and incoming dogs to find the best match for you.

We’d also encourage you to have a look at our Available Dogs section on this site, where you can learn a little about the dogs we currently have waiting for a home, and let us know if you are interested in any of these guys.

We also have regular events where you will be able to meet some of our dogs and speak to some of our volunteers and owners who’ve adopted from us. This is also an excellent opportunity to ask any questions you have and raise any concerns you might have.

Introductions: We’ll get in touch as soon as we have found a dog that we believe might be a good match for you, and we’d make the arrangements to get you together.

Once we’ve found a potential match we’ll arrange a meet and greet for you to take the dog for a walk and find out a little bit about them. We can then arrange a sleep-over so you can spend a little more time with the dog and get to know them a little better. If all goes well, we’ll arrange for your new companion to move in with you.

Follow Up: Once your dog is settled into their new home, we’ll arrange a follow up. We like to make sure our dogs are happy and settling into their forever home, and that you have the support you need adjusting to life with a new member of the family.

We will call up from time to time during the first few months to see how it’s all going, help you with any issues or concerns, and answer any questions that come up.

We’ll also provide you with some tips for introducing your new companion into your home, family, friends and any pets you already have in your house, as well as some information about greyhounds and lurchers to help you take care of them.

There are always dogs that need a home, and new dogs arriving, so you shouldn’t have long to wait for your new companion!

You might have heard of this if you’ve been speaking to rehoming people or read a bit about adopting a dog online.

To put it simply, it’s a rough guide for settling a new dog, particularly rehomed dogs, into your home: it takes 3 days for your new dog to decompress from travel, 3 weeks for them to learn your routine, and 3 months for them to truly feel at home.

Obviously every dog is different, just like people, so this is a rough guide that’s used to help adopters understand what they might expect from their new companion.

We will keep in touch with you and arrange follow ups to make sure you’re doing well.

We like to make sure our dogs are happy and settling into their forever home, and that you have the support you need adjusting to life with a new member of the family.

We will arrange some follow-up calls during the first few months to see how it’s all going, help you with any issues or concerns, and answer any questions that come up.

Once you have adopted a dog from GAL, you will have access to our support and advice, whenever you need us, for the remainder of the dog’s life.

We love to catch up with our hounds and see them thriving with their new families. We hope you’ll stay in touch via our Facebook and/or Instagram pages and would love to see you at our events from time to time.