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
Thursday, January 27, 2005
Kudos to Race For Adoption
From the NGA Daily news:
Race for adoption
A unique, new program called Race For Adoption raised $54,485 for retired Greyhound placement programs in less than six months in 2004. Figures released to the Greyhound Association of America this week indicated that critical funding to three adoption programs, two in the Florida panhandle area and the other in Connecticut, were generated.
Race For Adoption involves purses earned by active racing Greyhounds being donated to the program by their owners. Funding was also derived through donations in the form of shares for these designated runners. Seven Greyhounds currently racing at Wheeling (WV), Derby Lane (FL), Jacksonville (FL) and Southland (AR) are the Race For Adoption contingent. Five of the participating runners have been donated by a single owner, Larry Birnbaum.
Greyhound Racing Association of America (GRA) has become involved with the Race For Adoption group in an effort to promote and dramatically expand the program.
“ This visionary group of just a few individuals have shown us all what is possible,” said Kip Keefer, President of GRA. “ It’s time for everyone to follow this magnificent example and get on board with this program. With a single dog from each kennel racing for adoption the potential proceeds that can be generated for Greyhound placement is astounding.”
The GRA plans to seek the participation of Greyhound and kennel owners to volunteer 50 percent of a designated Greyhound’s purses. Major Greyhound tracks will also be approached seeking help in enlisting the participation of all contract kennels and Greyhound owners. Proceeds derived from the program could potentially lead to far greater funding of existing programs, formation of new chapters and transportation and logistical support.
Keefer and the GRA believe that the program is the key to realizing a desire held by everyone involved in the modern day racing industry and adoption community, 100% placement.
“ It’s been said that the progress of Greyhound adoption, through the collective efforts of so many dedicated people, is perhaps the greatest success story in modern animal welfare. With wide ranging participation in Race For Adoption, the final, conclusive chapter could be written.”
Link to article: http://www.networksplus.net/nga/ads/2005/jan/25gra.htm
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 .
Monday, January 03, 2005
Happy new year!
Ok, so I’m a couple of days late, but give me a break ok?
We, myself and the hounds, had a nice quiet New Years Eve and celebrated by eating shrimp and snoozing on the couch. You can figure out who did what.
My foster got his cast off on Friday and is now sporting a soft cast & splint. He’s still getting around on 3 legs but will use the broken one for support and an occasional step. He goes back in for a check up & x-rays in two weeks and if it’s healed enough they will remove the cast & splint. If not he’ll be wearing it for another two weeks after that. He is really a good boy and is coming out of his shell more each day, no doubt he is learning from watching Cody… but I’m not sure if that is good or bad. 