Racing
Monday, March 20, 2006
Follow That Hound!
Have you ever wanted to see how a greyhound puppy was raised? How about being able to watch your adopted pup race on the track before you adopted him/her. Yes, thats right, I said before. If you said yes to either of those questions or have questions on any other aspect of our four legged athletes racing careers then I have the website for you…
Follow That Hound! was created so that others can share in the journey of a greyhound, from birth to racing to retirement. FTH gives preadopters the opportunity to see how a greyhound is raised, trained, raced and finally - retired. Many people who own a retired racer have no idea about how their hound was raised. Through FTH they are given a “behind the scenes” view that is not usually seen by the general public.
The Follow That Hound! web site can be found at http://followthathound.com. On the website you will find pictures from when greyhounds are only minutes old to being full grown athletes and everything in between.
What started as an idea and has since blossomed into a very successful and informative program for all those involved.
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Wednesday, April 27, 2005
Plainfield Track Closing
It was announced today that due to the recent zoning approval for the building of a NASCAR race track all live racing will cease on May 14th. Once the new racetrack structure is rebuilt live racing will return on a seasonal basis in 2006.
Thursday, February 17, 2005
NGA vs. AKC Greyhounds
I’m often asked what the difference is between an retired racer (NGA) and a show bred (AKC) greyhound or I’ll hear that the racing greyhounds are not ‘real’ greyhounds at all because they are bred to race. As I’ve done a lot of reading and researching on this subject it really comes down to the individual hounds genetics whether or not it meets the AKC breed standards. Just because a dog was AKC bred doesn’t necessarily mean they will conform to breed standards and will be able to be shown. Conversely the same holds true for NGA hounds and there are quite a few that do meet AKC standards. There have actually been a few cross over hounds (registered with both the NGA and then the AKC) who have finished their racing career and then went on to win a Best In Show at an AKC event.
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Friday, January 28, 2005
Greyhounds running for charity
From the Omaha World-Herald:
Dogs take bite from boy’s bills
BY JULIE ANDERSON
WORLD-HERALD STAFF WRITERCOUNCIL BLUFFS - Five-year-old Cole Jipsen of rural Griswold, Iowa, doesn’t just have people pulling for him in his fight against leukemia.
He has two dogs - prize-winning greyhounds, to be exact - running for him.
The owners of two kennels that race at Bluffs Run Greyhound Park have donated the dogs to Cole and his family to help raise money to cover the cost of his medical care.
Under the agreement, the family owns the dogs and will receive half of all purse money the two dogs win during their careers at Bluffs Run. The Bryon Legg and Plum Creek Kennels will continue to maintain the dogs.
Bryon Legg of Bryon Legg Kennel said donating a dog was the kennel owners’ way of helping the family.
“The purse money at Bluffs Run for the Iowa-bred dogs is real good, so this is an opportunity to help that family,” he said.
David Robinette of Plum Creek Kennel said he and Legg decided on the donation not only to raise money for Cole but also to draw attention to his plight and encourage others to help.
Robinette said the dogs have been good to him.
“It’s the least I can do to help a family out that has had a little bit tougher luck than I’ve had,” he said.
The kennel owners, who are friends, have small-town connections with the Jipsens. All live in rural Griswold, and Cole’s grandfather is a neighbor of Legg’s. Also involved is Mike Muhlbauer of Griswold, a friend and partner of Legg’s.
Kevin Jipsen, Cole’s father, said the family is grateful to everyone who cares about their son.
“They’ll never know how much we appreciate the help everyone has given us,” he said.
Cole was diagnosed Nov. 8 after his mother, Amber, noticed something wasn’t right. He currently is in remission. He just finished his third round of chemotherapy and has two rounds to go.
“It was a shocker, that’s for sure,” said Kevin Jipsen, who farms part-time and works as Griswold’s water superintendent. Cole has two younger brothers, ages 3 and 1.
The hardest thing for Cole is that he hasn’t been able to get outside to play, his dad said. Cole can’t go to preschool or play much with other children because of his weakened immune system.
“That upsets him,” Jipsen said.
Legg said each kennel chose its top pup to run for Cole. Greyhounds typically have a career of about four years.
Speedy Blue of the Legg Kennel has won his first two races and collected a total of $2,420 since November. Jipsen’s Dream, from Plum Creek Kennel, has won his first race and brought home $1,914 this year.
Rory DeSantiago, Bluffs Run’s racing director, said people associated with the track often take up collections to help colleagues with needs. But this is the first time he has heard of anyone donating dogs.
Link to article: http://www.omaha.com/index.php?u_np=0&u_pg=1642&u_sid=1320643
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Tuesday, January 04, 2005
Finding Your Greyhounds History
Since these questions come up often I’ve put together this post outlining the tattoos and how to use them to find a hounds racing name along with using that information to obtain further data on the hounds pedigree and racing history.
Retired racing greyhounds have ear tattoos that identify their litter number and birth date.
The LEFT ear contains a 5 digit number that is assigned to the litter at birth. All pups in a particular litter will have the same number.
The RIGHT ear contains either a 2 or 3 digit number followed by a letter. The numbers represent the month and year the hound was born in. The first 1 or 2 numbers identify the month and the last number identifies the year. The letter signifies the order in which they were tattooed.
Examples:
110C - 11=Nov, 0=2000, C= 3rd pup tattooed
42A - 4=April, 2=2002, A=1st pup tattooed
Now that the tattoos have some meaning we can find out their racing name in one of two ways.
First, the most definitive way of finding out your hounds racing name is to call the National Greyhound Association (NGA) at 785-263-4660 with the tattoo numbers and they can look up your hounds info in a matter of minutes. The NGA is open weekdays from 7-5 CST. When you call just tell them you are looking for the racing name of a hound and they will ask you for the tattoo numbers. They can even work with partial tattoo numbers if they are not 100% clear.
The second way is to use the web site Greyhound-Data ( http://greyhound-data.com ) to search for their information.
Using this link: http://greyhound-data.com/earmark.htm (or by choosing Tattoo off the menu from the main web site) a search page will appear giving you search options; right ear, left ear, gender, color, birth year, land. The database usually only contains LEFT EAR tattoo data for US hounds so that is the only tattoo criteria that should be used when searching. You may try limiting the results by gender, color, birth year or land but to yield the the most results just use the LEFT EAR number.
You should be presented with all the hounds matching that tattoo number. In many cases this will be the whole litter but the database isn’t always 100% complete. Sometimes two litters will be displayed, but with different birth years so look out for that.
Now if you know part of their racing name or if your hound is a unique color in the litter (like the only white hound in a litter of brindles) you can easily figure out which hound is yours. But if there are multiple options you will still have to call the NGA as described above to get accurate information.
Once you have the hounds racing name you can use these various methods to find your hounds heritage and racing history.
1. Check Greyhound-Data for their pedigree and race information. Greyhound-Data doesn’t always have all of the race information but it’s at least a good place to start.
2. Sign up and register at Rosnet ( http://rosnet2000.com ). At Rosnet you can also find race results (only for certain tracks, may be more or less than what Greyhound-Data has) and if you are lucky race replays from certain tracks.
3. Do a simple Google search. Enter in the racing name of your greyhound within quotes followed by the word greyhound after it. (For example: “One Fast Doggie” greyhound) You will be surprised what might come up. Many tracks don’t report their results to Rosnet but instead use Trackinfo ( http://trackinfo.com ). A Google search will usually turn up those results (and usually only if the dog placed 1, 2 or 3). Many times the links are old and broken and the pages are not able to be retrieved any more but you are able to view Googles cache by clicking the Cached link at the end of the summary.
4. If you know the track they raced at you can always check the tracks website, sometimes they keep historic info available. This is not always the case as track web sites can vary greatly.
5. The last source you can use is Greybase. Greybase has all the race results for all tracks and even more detailed information like owners, trainers and kennels. There is a $15 fee for the detailed information but it’s well worth it if you want to know everything about your couch potato. To request info send an email to .
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