The Greek Harehound (a.k.a Gekka in Greece) is hardly known outside it's country of origin, Greece, nor will you find a lot of pictures or photographs of this breed. Therefore I decided to construct a simple homepage about the Greek Harehound. Another reason is that I apparently am the owner of a Greek Harehound, but there's a story to that; this is the story of Kostas.
In the summer of 2000 my girlfriend (Sabrina) and I decided to spend our holidays in Greece. An obvious choice since we own a little house on one of Greece's islands called Evia. One afternoon we were having a drink in one of the local taverns and a young couple came up carrying a little puppy. They told the owner of the tavern that they found it in the middle of nowhere barking and crying. They couldn't leave it there (at the time Greece suffered a terrible heatwave) and took the puppy to the tavern hoping to find someone who would take care over the poor little creature. Now dogs are my passion and they've always been a part of my life, even when I was a kid. Sabrina has been brought up with dogs around her too. Moreover there was a place for a dog in our life so the choice wasn't hard to make. We looked at each other briefly and decided to take care of this pathetic puppy. And pathetic it was! It couldn't stand on its legs anymore. It was exhausted, dizzy and very thirsty. We really were afraid it wouldn't make it through the night. We immediately went to our Greek house where it drank some water and fell asleep like it was in a coma.
The next morning I woke up of a sound I hadn't heard for a long time. The little doggy was awake and very lively. Now we could take a good, close look at it. It appeared to be male and it was about ten weeks old (I could tell because of my experience of being a dogs trainer in an animalshelter in the past).
His fur was black and tan with a white spot on the chest. His tail curling upwards. Now we had to give it a name. Being a Greek dog it had to have a Greek name. We came upon Kostas. This is a very common (people's) name in Greece and the English equivalent would be Charles. It was the right choice 'cause it suits him well.
I was wondering what breeds were combined in this dog. For me it obviously was a bastard. The black and tan fur and its body pointed in the direction of a Doberman, but it's feet were to small. Having such small feet I was sure it wouldn't grow very high. But how wrong I was. After the first year Kostas reached a height of 52 cm with a weight of 18 kilos!
We went to a veterinarian to give Kostas it's injections and a passport and we went home to The Netherlands.
Kostas developed to a very lively and playful dog, crazy about little children and other dogs. Besides that he's very fast and agile. He outruns any other dog except for the Greyhounds. Everyone I met asked me what kind of breed he was and I answered that he was a bastard which I took from Greece. But he had such temperament. I even doubted myself for my abilities of training dogs. No other dog I ever encountered had such stubborn character! And puberty had yet to come...
In the summer of 2001 we went to Greece again, this time with Kostas. The Greek people recognized him as a Gekka or a Greek Harehound, specially bred for hunting small game. Now the puzzle became complete: his enormous temperament, agility, speed and energy; Kostas was a huntingdog which probably broke loose from a local breeder.
The journey to Greece was a very fine training for Kostas. He learned a lot and is more quiet and calm now. He even listens better, and that's our best achievement!
