Breeds 101: The slender Whippet

Whippets are a smaller, though just as athletic, version of the Greyhound.

Though not especially popular (ranking 60th in the American Kennel Club’s 2017 list), Whippets are intelligent, athletic and amiable.

They stand about 18-21 inches at the withers (shoulders) for females, and around 19-22 inches t the withers for males, weighing anywhere from 25 to 40 pounds.

The AKC Breed Standard reasonably states that the ideal Whippet be “a true sporting hound that covers a maximum of distance with a minimum of lost motion.”

Furthermore, it continues that the ideal Whippet “should convey an impression of
beautifully balanced muscular power and strength, combined with great elegance and grace of
outline.”

Whippets’ coats are smooth, short and sleek, and can be a wide variety of colors. According to the AKC, American and Canadian members of the breed are slightly larger than those in Europe and Australia.

While ancient Egyptians kept a sort of greyhound to defend their royal palaces, their relation to Whippets fast-fowards our history lesson to the England of the Middle Ages. Greyhounds were used to hunt stags, and those who were too small were given to the peasantry because they were considered defective.

Over time, racing Greyhounds became quite popular, and so their smaller cousins the Whippets were also used as racers, as a lower-budget option.

The AKC recognized the Whippet as an official breed in 1888, while The Kennel Club of England took a few years longer, until 1891, to do the same.

Whippets are generally gentle, but their energy is used in short, furious bursts, which requires lots of resting the rest of the time. More often than not, this resting takes place on people furniture.

They can be sensitive, which makes sense, as being athletes, they’re artists, and artistic excellence requires certain peculiarities.

They live fairly long lives for dogdom, around 12 to 15 years, and the only common health problem in the breed is a tendency toward arrythmia (irregular heartbeat), which doesn’t always mean there’s a problem, though it can.

A Whippet named Whiskey won first the Hound Group and then Best in Show at the 2018 National Dog Show presented by Purina on Thanksgiving Day.

Also, Minden High School in Nebraska and Okeene High School in Oklahoma both use Whippets as their school mascot. Likely other schools scattered around the country do, too.

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