It has been a typical week of highs and lows. The most recent high being a high after Newinn Yolo’s 28.61 (-20) trial at Wimbledon on slow going.
I was a bit surprised with the going allowance, I thought it would be at least -40, which would be more consistent with the times recorded by some of the other runners, notably King Dec.
The plan is to check him over on Thursday morning and then head back to Wimbledon on Tuesday for the Juvenile.
He will be our only runner for a return journey of 480 miles. I set off at just gone 4am for the trial session and rolled onto the Wimbledon carpark at around 9.20.
We had a stop on the way and Yolo was as good as gold on the journey. It was a long one but it was all worth it.
The low spot was the double injury setback for Gainstown Beaver and Musical Storm at Crayford.
Beaver pulled a monkey muscle and still only just failed to qualify for the final of the Bussey Memorial. He is being treated and should be fine in about six weeks.
The injury to Musical Storm was just a freak that could have happened anywhere, even while exercising at home.
She had trialled brilliantly and was going well in her race when a dog fell in front of her. She tried to hurdle it but rapped her leg on his head and broke two metacarpels just under her wrist.
When I saw her running I feared the worst but thankfully she wasn’t too bad.
We stopped at the vet in Sandbach on the way home and he strapped up the injury. We had set out at 7am for Crayford and arrived home at 11.30pm
We are reasonably hopeful that she will make a full recovery and may race again. If not, she could go for breeding, or if that doesn’t work out she will end up as a pet.
She is a lovely bitch and the most important thing is that it we still have her. She is just getting on with life.
It was nice to get a call from Ladbrokes’ Richard Brankley the next morning checking that she was okay.
He offered to put her into the track’s home finding scheme if necessary. Thankfully it wasn’t needed but I greatly appreciated the offer.
The other big news was that Little Flame had a litter of pups by Westmead Hawk, which is a repeat mating of the litter that gave us Take The Crown.
I was determined to try again and thankfully Nick (Savva) let us have one of the few remaining straws.
There were six dogs and a bitch in the litter which were whelped down by Michael Gargan in Bolton.
Michael whelps down and rears all our litters and does a great job. There were six dogs and a bitch in the litter and all are doing brilliantly.
Michael is keeping a pair, we owe another two to Nick, which leaves us with three dogs.
Darren, Take The Crown’s owner, wants a dog and another owner in the kennel wants a half share with Julie (McCombe, Pat’s parter) and myself.
The first litter was so good it would be lovely to get another like it.
Take The Crown wasn’t the only decent dog in the litter. There was a litter brother, a big 80lb dog called Lethal Force who clocked 16.31 in his first official trial for the sprint at Perry Barr, but then broke a foreleg.
We also sold another dog to Martin and Priska from Austria. They raced him on the continent where he broke track records.
I remember trainer Patrick Jenssens, who knows the Continental racing scene very well, telling me that the form was good enough for him to have been a Derby dog over here.
Last but not least, I was disappointed only to get three runners into the Midland Puppy Derby, and two of those are in the same heat.
The three that didn’t get accepted all had 28.40 form, so it wasn’t as though they weren’t good enough.
But when I saw the draw I realised that the racing office had tried to share around the seeds. All my six were railers but they had tried to include a few and wide seeds which obviously went against us.
It looks a cracking competition though, and I am looking forward to it already.
