Back on the lure coursing field, that is! After almost a year hiatus from the sport, Echo and I (and Primo!) travelled to Atlanta last Sunday to attend the Inaugural Stakes of the newly formed, National Lure Coursing Club. I was interested in learning more about the club’s unique running rules and Echo…well, she  just wanted to chase the bunny. Why the year off? Sometimes life just gets in the way of life, and that seems to be what happened over the last several months…every time there was a trial, I had a family obligation or work obligation or some other reason the dogs and I couldn’t attend.

I knew how much Echo missed it, but I didn’t realize how much *I* missed it until Sunday. Getting up before the sun. Loading up the hounds and driving a couple hours to stand in the cold or heat or rain or whatever to watch amazing canine athletes demonstrate what they do best: chase the bunny. For those not familiar with lure coursing, it’s basically a sport designed to recreate hare coursing by using string around a sytem of pulleys to pull three white plastic bags (the bunnies) around a course of straights and turns. Courses range from 500 yards to 1000+ yards, with average courses being 850-1000 yards long.

It was great to see some friendly faces and meet some new ones. Echo had a couple of really nice runs. Good enough for first place in her Open division. I really enjoyed the NLCC’S double bracket, single elimination format (more on that later). Uma Rapiti photography was on site, so I’ll be posting pictures of both Echo and Primo as soon as I get them downloaded and formatted.

Echo says: Step away from my ribbon!

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