Life is more about trialling than racing this week. We had one runner at Nottingham on Monday and will hopefully have three at Perry Barr on Friday.

But the trials will be just as interesting. We are taking eight to Newcastle for trials at the end of the week, four for the Northern Puppy Derby and another four for the All England Cup.

All the dogs went well last week, particularly Hoffman with his 28.24 trial.

I know we trainers get some stick for moaning about tracks so I think it only right to say that Newcastle was in superb condition. Absolutely ten out of ten. The racing office were also very decent in allowing so many solos.

Perry Barr and Nottingham are right up there too at the moment, in terms of the running surfaces, and it is a big relief when you are trialling back dogs from injury.

We gave Take The Crown and Newinn Yolo their first trials back at Perry Barr last week and they both came off sound.

After such a long period of time, you can expect a bit of soreness the next day, particularly with Take The Crown who has been off a year with a broken hock. But thankfully, there was no reaction at all.

I only trialled them over the ‘short sprint’, from the 660 metre boxes to the line. Yolo did 13.55 and Take The Crown and 13.83. If all goes to plan, then they will both have full sprints this week (275m).

 

You never stop learning in this business and we have had an unusual case in a dog called Farloe Ziggy.

He was bought for big money after two impressive wins at Derry in November of last year.

We trialled him at Belle Vue the following month and he came off lame. He had split a muscle sheath on his near foreleg and I took him to Richard Torr who stitched it up.

We started trialling him back four months later and he was hugely disappointing. We took him back to Richard Torr who examined the dog and was completely happy with the outcome of the operation.

The dog wasn’t walking lame but we gave him another couple of months off and trialled him back again. He did 14.23 for the Perry Barr sprint. Compare it with Newinn Yolo last week and you can see how poor it was.

I was beginning to think we would never get him back but we trialled him week after week after week for the next few weeks.

Gradually he started to improve and last week he clocked 28.58 for 480 metres at Perry Barr.

If he had won a big final, I couldn’t have been more thrilled.

He is still only two years and three months old. So fingers crossed.