Hello NLGA
Dog Blog Readers…it’s Max again!
In the last blog post we took a look at the racing of
Vincent, Destiny, and Cool to see how they were doing as we follow them to
retirement. Today we will review the
racing of Snow Ball, Smith, and Crown.
Smith and Crown were supposed to run a race on January 31st. Do any of you remember January 31st? Well, it was not one of our coldest days as
the temperatures here were around 0 deg F…but the temperatures were dropping fast
throughout the day! And in Council
Bluffs, where our "Follow a Hound" friends are racing, it was also a very cold day
with temperatures in the single digits as race time neared. Since it was so cold (remember, they are
further south than us!) the races were cancelled. It was just too cold to race at those temperature! I don’t mind going for a
walk with my nice warm coat on when it is cold but the thought of racing at
that temperature with no coat on…burrr, makes me shiver! The
temperatures were back near 30 deg F on February 1st and the races continued. The greyhounds that did not race on January
31st raced on February 2nd instead.
So, let’s look at Smith’s racing:
Smith has gone down and up and down again in grades since I
started watching his racing. He started
out in Grade A. He ran four races and
dropped back to Grade B. In Grade B, he
placed 4th and then won his next race which moved him back up to
Grade A. He then ran three races in a
row finishing 4th or below which dropped him back down to Grade B again. February 2nd was Smith’s first race
back in Grade B and he placed 8th.
In that race Smith came out of the box well and was in the lead at the
beginning of the race. Coming into the
first corner there was some bumping and Smith was in the middle of it. He spun a little sideways (but did not fall!) and
that was enough to bring him away from the front. As racers, we always do our best to run clean races with
no bumping but sometimes it happens!
Sort of like short track speed skating!
Here are a couple pictures.
 |
| Smith (wearing #3) at start of race |
 |
| Smith (wearing #3) bumped going into first corner |
Here is a summary of Crown’s racing.
Crown had dropped two grades since I started watching
him. He had three races in Grade B and
finished all three in 5th place.
That made three in a row below 4th place and therefore he
moved down a grade to C. He had a couple
restarts in his count in Grade C with a 3rd place finish on January
2nd and a 2nd place finish on January 12th. On the 18th he finished 8th. And on the 24th he finished 7th. On February 2nd he finished 5th
which made three races in a row below 4th place and moves him down a
grade to Grade D for his next race. At
the end of the race Lucky, the white bone shaped lure, goes behind the
fence. All the racers stop and gather
right where they see Lucky! Here is a
picture of Crown (wearing the green and white 7 silks) at chasing down Lucky after the race.
 |
| Crown (wearing #7) chasing down "Lucky" |
Here is Snow Ball’s racing summary:
Snow Ball has gone up and down a grade since I started
watching her. She was racing in Grade B
at the beginning of December. She had a
3rd, 8th, and 2nd place finishes. Then on December 22nd she won her
Grade B race which moved her up a Grade.
She ran three Grade A races and dropped back to Grade B. She finished 8th on January 19th
and she finished 6th on February 1st. That is two races in a row with 4th
place or below finishes. We will see how
she does in her next Grade B race. You
may be wondering why she had so much time between her last two races. Well, Snow Ball actually ran a schooling race
on January 25th. Schooling
races do not count towards ‘official’ races but are rather as the name
suggests, schooling. Here is a video of
her schooling race. She is wearing the
yellow silks out of box 6.
As we continue to follow Destiny, Snow Ball, Cool, Smith,
Vincent, and Crown to retirement, are there any predictions on who will join us
in retirement first? Feel free to comment!
Until next time,
~Max
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