A bit of a digression. Everything about a racing Greyhound is recorded and analyzed and it all goes to a giant database that, with the help of your dog's ear tattoos, you can track. So, thanks to this, we know Cheyenne's lineage, we know that she wasn't a particularly good racer (like her littermates) and never reallly made it to The Show. And we know that she came to us from Tuscon.
She was, I guess, relatively game upon stepping out into the snow. Immediately attempted to get back in. But with a little urging, headed out into the powdery white stuff. We're working on getting a proper coat for her — lest you think us spoiling her, note that Greyhounds have light fur and very thin skin — so used an old base layer, with somewhat mixed results. Anyway, pretty even-keeled (which describes her basic state), she did her business and got back inside to her bed quickly.
I was at work today, but at the end was rewarded with this:
BTW, M+D are safely here, beating the storms that covered the north- and midwest. They arrived in town last Thursday, traveled with us to Abq to meet Cheyenne, and were dogsitters on Monday. We've gathered for dinners, they've done their own things during the day (weather permitting).
This isn't due to melt, and there's supposed to be more over the next couple days, guaranteeing a white Christmas here in Santa Fe.
2 comments:
I'm confused. This dog finishes in second place and then they farm her out. Seems like fairly steady improvement in the race she ran. That seems to me to say potential.
Moreso than even baseball, Greyhound racing seems to be a numbers game, all about analyzing statistics and rewarding performance. I'm starting to get the feeling that there are (comparatively) large numbers of dogs bred and trained, just to get a (relatively) few to race.
From Cynthia Branigan's Adopting the Racing Greyhound (updated, but still dated, I think): "The first professional race a Greyhound competes in is called his maiden race.... The average age ... is 18 months. Speed is not the only factor that determines which dog will win. A dog must possess endurance and agility, too.... A young Greyhound is given six chances to come in first, second, third, or fourth in a maiden race. If he does not accomplish this, he is either 'retired" and put up for adoption or is euthanized."
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