Okay - so we left Friday to head down to Jacksonville, FL for NOTRA racing. We decided to take Tigger with us for some practice so he did his first practice since his injury Friday afternoon and did SPECTACULAR!!!! He handled it wonderfully - he kept close to the rail, no wandering, kept awesome speed and came off the track barking and wagging his tail. No soreness, lameness, swelling to his leg at all.
So we started our day out racing on Saturday - it ended great with Viva getting 3 ORC points and completing her Oval Race Championship and finished 3rd in the meet of 30 dogs!!! GiGi was 5th, Striker 6th, Bosley 7th, Quincy 8th (huge surprise!), Cuda 9th, Tinsley 12th, Winnie 14th, Charlize 18th and completed her OTR title - her very first title, Delite 22nd, Gali 26th, Helen 27th and Rupert 29th for Best of Opposite Turtle Award!!! Then we decided to practice Tigger again, but with a dog this time, so we picked what we think is our fastest dog right now (Viva) and ran him and her together. He passed her coming out of the box, she caught up to him on the straight a bit and then he blew in front of her on the backstretch. He's nearly the same ole' Tigger!!!! Then we get a phone call from Sharron Lane, Blaine took Winners Dog for a point at the Franklin, TN shows!! Awesome day!!!
Then on Sunday we got a phone call around 7:30am on our way to the track, Anna decided to whelp early and already had 3 puppies. My younger brother Stuart (14 years) and my father were acting midwives this day :) We continued to recieve updates throughout the day and she had 9 puppies before we got home. So now on to racing - we decided to run Tigger in the meet - he placed 3rd in the meet (30 dogs) behind Stoney & Brodie!!!! If he had pulled out the 2nd place, he would have finished his SORC, but we are SOOOO incredibly happy that he ran all 3 programs with no problems whatsoever. He is still doing awesome, hasn't been sore at all and is happy as can be! Striker placed 4th for 4 ORC points and GiGi placed 5th for 2 ORC points - way to go kids!!! Bosley placed 6th, Cuda 7th & Helen 9th to finish her OTR title. I will have to check results again to see how the kids all placed, but they all did awesome! We get another phone call from Sharron on our way home to tell us that Blaine was Winners Dog AGAIN for another point (he's a 1/3 of the way there) and all his points he's been handled to have been by his owner Sharron Lane!!!! Huge Kudos!!!
So we FINALLY get home, Anna's had 9 puppies and we can tell she still has more but is tired and hasn't been contracting hard enough, so we give her an oxytocin shot to help her along. She pushes out #10 (with some help from us) and it's a BIG (well, much bigger than her other puppies) white/brindle girl who is dead. We work on her for a long time, but can't get her going and she is incredibly cold so we had to give up on her - just wasn't meant to be. But she has another 2 puppies after that for a grand total of 12 puppies (7 boys and 5 girls). Our final tally after loosing the one puppy is 11 puppers (7 boys and 4 girls) and they are all doing fabulous. We are VERY surprised to have solid white puppies (most likely will be creams), we have 5 of them and they look very strange among their brindle/white littermates. I will post individual photos in another post but here is a group shot of them all after we all got cleaned up.
And then to top it all off, I get an email from Janina today to tell me that Elle won his Intermediate class at a VERY large International All-Breed show in Katowice, Poland!!!! She was thrilled with this, he has to wait until May until he can get his last CWC for his Polish Championship - but they are still showing him in the mean time and he's doing incredible!!!!
We also heard from Janet that Star got her first leg towards her RN and had a great score to boot!!! Not easy with Whippets so we are VERY proud!!!!
AND - Sarah took Dave to a practice straight race and he did awesome - ran through and open box, through a closed box and with a muzzle on - he really enjoyed himself and we look forward to when Sarah starts running him - we think he will do great!!!
What an AWESOME weekend it was!!!!!! And thank you to all our owners and co-owners, we can't do it without you ;)
