...to make sure her puppies were good racers. She would pick up the squeaky toys and run with them and all the pups would chase her. Before long they were running with the squeaky toys themselves. I knew things were going to be OK when they started to outrun her.
When it came time to train them on a leash that was easy also. I would put the leash on one and the other pups would pick it up and drag the poor pup all over the place. It was hilarious! I have seen people get $10,000 on video shows for dogs doing a lot less than that - things that other people see as unusual, I used to see everyday.
One puppy, Saddlebags, broke her right front leg when she was about 5 months old. We moved her into the trailer while she was wearing her cast. She broke the cast 3 times in the 6 weeks she wore it because the other pups figured out that she was in there and they would run circles around the trailer barking. She would run back and forth down the hallway the entire length of the trailer barking back at them. You would think the pain would slow her down a little - not in the slightest bit. I was worried that this would hold back her racing career but it didn't. She went to double A and stayed there until she was hurt and we had to retire her. She got a good home with a family.
Poor little Preety came up to me one day and she looked like Frankenstein. The whole top of her head was swollen. I had never seen anything like it. I was sure that she must have run into a tree at 40 miles an hour and cracked her skull. I put her on a round of antibiotics and the swelling immediately went down. I took her off them after 10 days and her head immediately swelled up again. I did another round and it went back down. When her head swelled again I took her to the vet. He started laughing when he saw her. He asked if she had been chewing any wood (she had, she was cutting teeth). He said that she had a splinter in her gum and the only place the swelling had to go was behind her eye socket. He drilled a hole in her gum for drainage and this time the swelling didn't come back.
She was around 8 months old when that happenned. I took her by the track on the way home from the vet. You should have seen the trainers drooling over her. My dogs looked track ready and they were only 8 months old. My giant sprint field was paying off - that, and the fact that I didn't skimp on their nutrition either. In fact we didn't skimp on anything, those pups even had Lyme disease shots because the mosquitoes were so bad out in the swamp.
Unfortunately it wasn't long before my pups figured out another way around the fence. We couldn't keep them in and they were starting to roam the neighborhood. (that was the downside to raising them to think) The plus side to raising thinkers is they think their way around the track. They looked for ins and outs in a race instead of running the same way around the track every time. So it paid off in the long run, but while they were pups they started getting out every time we left the house! Finally one day the dog pound caught them all. They were nice enough to take them to the track kennels for me instead of putting them in the shelter (I gave the man a HUGE tip for that). We kenneled them at the track for about a month until arrangements were made for them to go to a farm that had the facilities to hold them.
During the month they were kenneled at the track Bobby and I had to keep quiet. If they heard us in our own kennels (they were in an overflow kennel) they would jump 8 foot fences to get to us. One day Paro jumped 8 fences to find me. One more fence and she would have been to my kennel.
At least my babies loved me.
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