What to Say at Your Next Dinner Party

I've been to several dinner parties in my 31 - almost 32 - years on this earth. I regularly entertain clients, and even though most of the time the gatherings are held at a restaurant the conversations are usually the same, dry, boring topics and somehow it takes just a bit more wine each time to get through the night. Whether it is their kids, politics, their successful business, their slumping business, or their new marketing strategy, the conversation typically runs its course in about and hour and for the last two hours that you're trapped with these people, you start bringing up things that are either hit or miss to talk about.

I once had dinner with the former Iranian ambassador, who now owns an oil refinery business in Houston. We had a very interesting conversation about bass fishing one evening after I asked him every question I could think of that might relate to his former profession without letting on I knew very little about that time in history because I was only 5 years old (max). That was an unexpected hit of a conversation. The time I had dinner with an HR manager who filled the silence by going down the list of every store in Manhattan that she ever shopped at and suggested I could use fashion help, that was a miss.

But Saturday night was the best dinner party I've ever attended. Great food. Great atmosphere. And great greyhounds! Eight of them to be exact. Thanks to my friend Patti's gourmet cooking abilities, we enjoyed an evening of steaks, shrimp cocktail, and amazing homemade ice cream. Oh, and wine. I forgot to mention amazing wine. In attendance were Kim and Guy and their three daughters - Bella, Lindsay and Rosie; Kevin and myself with Seka and Roxy; and of course our hostess with the most-ess, Patti with Remi, Sugar and Lucy.

Dinner conversation included a debate about what we feed our dogs, have fed our dogs, why we switched, would we ever switch and under what circumstances would we change. Guy spilled the beans that Kim developed an entire memory stick of 500 photos once and not one of them had a human on it - something that none of the ladies blinked an eye at around the table. We talked about the differences in having three dogs vs only have two. And of course we had to laugh at how they were all sacked out on their beds with a couple of them coming over to the table to monitor our eating habits just in case we were having trouble finishing our meals.

It was amazing to see all eight girls hanging out together without a bark, whimper, yelp, or fuss between them. But that's a greyhound for you. They all found a bed or sofa and assumed the typical greyhound position. A few of them dug into the toys. And us human girls got silly towards the end of the night and dressed up Bella for a few photos. It was totally worth the two hour trip north to spend a fun night with friends. Our girls thought so too.


Lucy had some extra melatonin to make it through an afternoon storm, so she was very mellow and woke up with the munchies half way through our meal.


Bella abuse recorded on film. Her father didn't approve, but he didn't do anything to stop it!



Rosie is a flirt. She loves the men. She and Roxy became fast friends.

Maybe next time I'm hosting clients and I find out that they have a dog, I'll ask them what they feed their dog? It was fabulous conversation at this dinner party. Who knows?

P.S. This weekend is lure coursing. Fingers crossed Seka will certify on Saturday so she can run with the big dogs on Sunday. Wish us luck! We're so excited.