We are between major events at the moment but the kennel is still ticking over and there is plenty to do.
Most people seem to think that our day is largely spent exercising dog, where in fact, the majority of the time is taken up treating them.
They are not all major injuries like Newinn Yolo’s. In the majority of cases they are just little niggles that need attention to keep the dogs ticking over.
That might be one of the reasons so many track managements underestimate why we get so worked up about racing surfaces.
Lose a top class dog to injury and you will struggle to replace him or the owner. One of my fellow trainers was telling me that he has just lost two of his best owners in a fortnight. One of them had lost £50,000 worth of greyhounds to injury.
So you have to put the time in and hope they make a full recovery.
Newinn Yolo has been galloping around the paddocks at home and is showing no sign of pain from the injury to the radius bone just above his elbow.
With a little bit of luck we might even get a trial into him next week.
I like to prepare dogs for competitions by trialling them well. Some dogs benefit more from knowing there way around a track than others.
One good example is Vatican Gurkha who we took for a trial at Doncaster at the weekend with the Doncaster Leger in mind. It was his first run over six bends.
Experience has shown that over four bends, Gurkha would normally find around 30 spots from his first run so I was very pleased with his 41.98 trial. We had a good dog, Bower Hawk, clock 41.65 in the semis of the event five years ago, so I would love to think Gurkha will make his usual improvement.
If he doesn’t, I would suspect that the previous exertion took too much out of him and we would then switch to a slightly easier trip.
New York City Boy, the pup previously mentioned in this column as being a litter brother to Camp Joker and Latin Charm, finally made his debut at Nottingham on Monday and won first time out.
He clocked 28.84 in the heats of a 480 metre puppy competition beating a nice young bitch of ours called Peerless Trio.
Experience has taught us that only the exceptional pups can produce that sort of run and we are very excited by him.
It is so satisfying to have bred three competition class greyhounds in the same litter and I thought Camp Joker ran brilliantly when second in the Puppy Classic.
The plan is to send Charm and Peerless Trio for the Puppy Oaks at Nottingham and the male pups to Newcastle for the Northern Puppy Derby.
We had considered the British Bred Stakes at Nottingham but would probably have to face Eden The Kid and that is no small task.
Not that the Newcastle race will be much easier.
Ted Soppitt has a cracking young pup called Headford Road, who is still trialling. He has some excellent Galway form and clocked 27.69 (calc) on his first look at Belle Vue
We should also have Swift Hoffman in the All England Cup. He is scheduled to trial on the next two Thursdays.
The saddest moment of the week was saying goodbye to Mileheight Alba.
As I have said before, he is a lovely greyhound and we think the world of him. He would have made a great pet but instead is joining Brian Loughnane for a stud career in Ireland.
Having said all of that, it wouldn’t be the worst way to spend your retirement . . . .
