Echo and I will leaving for the ASFA International invitational in just a few weeks, so I thought she could use just a general exam and bloodwork. She gets these strange little growths on her from time to time that eventually dry up and fleck off, so I also wanted the doc to take a peek at one of those. Her general exam was unremarkable and her blood panel came back perfect, so she’s now got  clean bill of health! The vet said the little growths are nothing to worry about…most likely just a build up of oily skin material in her coat.

Melody was also in for a general exam and follow up bloodwork to check her kidney values. When she was at the specialist to have her toe amputed last year, her kidney values were off the chart. We put her on kidney-friendly food and rechecked at several weeks intervals and the levels did drop down. And ultrasound showed nothing unusual. This visit was just to take a look at her values and see if her kidney issues have progressed or stayed the same. Her creatinine was 2.7 (up from 2.1 6 months ago) which is elevated from what’s considered “normal” for a greyhound, but her BUN was within normal limits at 27. At this point, we are going to keep her on the kidney food and just recheck. However, the vet did clear her for toe amputation surgery, so we will be scheduling that in the next few weeks.

Tater was spayed last week and I noticed a little bit of fluid pooling around her spay incision, so I decided it was best to have the doc take a look. It wasn’t painful to the touch and the skin color along the incision looked great. It was just a little….puffy. The vet examined the incision and said he could feel that all the abdominal layers were intact, that sometimes the muscles just sweat a little fluid. He put her on an antibiotic just to be safe and said to keep her as quiet as possible. We’ll be keeping a close eye on that, for sure.

Peanut was in for a wellness visit last week and to have some baseline bloowork run…something we like to do for all new pups as soon as possible after coming home. Well, one of her values was a little high so they just wanted us to bring in her urine so they could make sure it was concentrating properly. Since she has had a few peepee accidents by the back door, it’s always best to rule out anything medical. I decide to bring her along with the urine specimen “just in case” they wanted to lay hands on her again for some reason. Turns out, her urine looked good and was properly concentrated so Peanut was just along for the ride. Which she didn’t seem to mind. She rides really well in the car and is just soooooo curious about everywhere she goes and everything she sees.

$200 and four healthy hounds later we headed for home…until the next visit!

Nearing the age of 6, it’s hard for an ‘older’ hound to be as competitive as the younger, fresher dogs. Someone forgot to tell Echo that though. She brought her A game last weekend and left the field with a 2d place finish on Saturday (forfeit in a three way tie for Field Champion) and a Best in Field win on Sunday. After taking about a year off from lure coursing and coming back at almost 6, I really thought this season would be fun runs. I would enjoy watching her run and she’d enjoy running. We certainly have had that! But she’s brought a level of competition that I didn’t know she still had in her. To say I’m proud and awed and humbled is an understatement.

Not only do I immensely enjoy watching her run, but she’s such a pleasure to spend the day with on the field. She can calmly watch a course in progress, having learned that her turn to run will come. She settles in the x-pen quickly and I can leave her without worrying she’ll try to escape or drive the neighboring cars nuts with a lot of barking.  She’s just a pleasure from beginning to end. My once in a lifetime girl.

All photos on this page are courtesy of Uma Rapiti Photography. Reprints are available from their site.

A nail biting moment as Echo (pink) and Cole (yellow) bunched up heading into the first turn. Wicked is in the background in blue

Her Best in Field final run with the very handsome Saluki, Pyr

Her Best in Field Trophy “stacked” photo…I imagine it’s a lot easier to get a stacked picture from a show dog!

The weather was pretty bad both days. Rainy and cold and windy. Ugh. But it didn’t seem to bother the dogs! The greyhound entry was very small – only 2 Field Champions, 1 Open and 1 Veteran on Saturday. On Sunday Echo was the only greyhound entered. I was actually glad she was the only one entered on Sunday, as that allowed her to run the course at her own pace.

On Saturday, Echo ran against Cole…Cole happens to be my favorite greyhound to watch lure course (other than my own). So, it’s always a special treat when he and Echo run together. After the prelim course, Cole was up by one point. Echo pulled it out on the final run to win with a combined score two points higher than Cole. I forfeited her Best of Breed run since she was going to be running on Sunday as well. It’s always nice to leave the field with the dog wanting more!

Being the only dog entered on Sunday, she was guaranteed the first place position and Best of Breed. Her first run was pretty sloppy as she blew a couple of the turns when she ran really wide. In true Echo form, her second run was MUCH better than the first. I had planned to run her for Best in Field because I thought she had plenty of gas left in the tank, but we were called home by Ken when Bodhi took a turn for the worse.

Despite the miserable weather, it was a great weekend of running. I got to watch some really nice dogs and chat with lots of great owners. We’ll be back on the coursing field next weekend for SEGC’s Run for Rescue (ASFA) on Saturday and the Lucy-Fox Cup (NLCC) on Sunday.

Go, Echo, Go!

Here she comes….

Sooooooo close…

Gotcha!

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!

I knew Echo was getting close to her Field Champion, but when we started coursing I wasn’t exactly sure how the points worked, so I didn’t keep a record of points earned at each event. But, I had a general idea of how many points each dog had. After the weekend in Moreland, GA I figured she was only a handful of points away. She already had one first place and one second place finish, so the two 1st place finishes she earned in Moreland more than met the placement requirement. After we got home from the weekend, I emailed the ASFA Records Coordinator for her official point total.

Going in to the weekend, she had a total of 68 points. She earned 24 points on Saturday and another 8 on Sunday for an exact total of 100 points!!!! It took her 8 field trials over the course of almost exactly one year and she is now the first hound in our pack to earn her Field Champ!

I am just, BEYOND thrilled! I know lure coursing isn’t about the titles, but this one does mean a lot to me. Her daddy (Grandpa aka Tame Game) burned up the oval track with 81 wins and a ranking on the all time race winners list. But, none of his kids were successful at the track by anyone’s standards. So it’s nice to see one of his kids show that he DID pass his heart for running on to his progeny. Even if it didn’t show on the big oval….it now ‘officially’ shows on the field.

photo courtesy of Uma Rapiti Photography

Congratulations to our amazing little Echo,  now also known as Dana’s Black Ink, FCh. We look forward to many more years of coursing with our special girl.

It turned out that they only needed us to take one, so we had to decide which of the two we wanted to foster. Ken wanted the small, black girl. And I’ll admit that black used to be my least favorite color of greyhound…so I said “Sure!” I knew it would be hard to let go of a Champ pup, but I thought it would be easier to let “Inky” go because I’d never been drawn to the black hounds.

When the load came in, I drove to South Carolina to pick her up. And it wasn’t love at first sight. She WAS adorable, to be sure! But I had my mind in “foster mode.” The first chink in my armor came as she roached on the way home…just like her daddy. When we got home, she ran straight into the house, went right up the stairs, jumped on the bed and looked up at me with her big brown eyes. Sigh…another chink.

Within a few days the group had pictures of all the new dogs on their website. I got an email saying that applications were coming in on “Inky” and we needed to make a decision if we wanted to keep her or adopt her out (foster homes always get first dibs on adopting their foster). Without even thinking, my fingers flew across the keyboard to respond: Mark her “Adoption Pending” to us!

My first failed foster…and what a way to fail. We renamed her Echo, as a tribute to her father. She had us wrapped around her little paw in no time. And now, of course, black is one of my favorite colors.

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