Cue the puperazzi! I’m a beauty queen! We Whippets are actually some of the best performing pups in dog shows, because we’re both beautiful and athletic. Plus, our short hair makes us pretty easy to groom, so we don’t require a ton of work to prepare for the show ring. Please, please: hold the apawse!

We Whippets actually aren’t that old; our story starts no more than a couple hundred years ago. We were developed in Northern England in the late 1700s when they crossed Greyhounds with fast, long-legged Terriers, creating a new breed of sighthounds (this is why we’re sometimes called small Greyhounds or Italian Greyhounds). Poachers were the ones who used us; we’re crazy fast, so we are perfect for hunting rabbits and other small game. But our pawesome hunting skills were used for more than just poaching. We were a breed beloved by the English working class men who used us for Whippet racing; they’d pit us against each other to test our speed or see which one of us could kill the most small animals. We’d also compete in rag racing, where we’d chase a rag on a long track that included roads and stretches of fields. We aren’t called the “Poor Man’s Racehorse” (and sometimes the “Lightning Rag Dog”) for nothing! We came to America when working class members from Lancashire, England m