I think it must be getting really boring for me to continue to post after each and every Racing For Fun meet about the wonderful time I had, and in any event there just aren’t enough superlatives in the dictionary. But I just can’t help it. There just isn’t a better group of people in the dog world than this small but hard-working and fun-loving club in BC, and there aren’t any other events that can rival their meets for sheer fun and fantastic sportsmanship.
This weekend was bittersweet, as we bid a very fond farewell to RFF founding members Janet & Bo Juzkiw, who are leaving for their new life in the Kootenays. Good luck Janet & Bo, we will miss you!!!
Tiercel finished 6th in the meet on Saturday and placed 4th in the conformation match. He was running very well on Sunday but unfortunately came out of the 3rd program a little sore, so he was scratched for the day. He still managed to post a B score only running three of four programs.
Lark had a fantastic weekend, finishing in the top-10 both days: 10th on Saturday and, running a B score, 8th on Sunday! She was also 2nd in the match on Sunday. Although she is mostly retired from the CWA matches, having finished #1 in the conformation standings last year and #2 the year before, she earned her eligibility Sunday by winning high score grade C, and since I didn’t have another eligible dog to show, I decided to go ahead and show her. She will not be a regular in the CWA match ring this year, but it was really fun to show her again, and she was so excited when she saw me get out the show lead and realized it was for her this time instead of her brother. She squealed and jumped up and down as much as she does when I get her muzzle out to go racing. She is one whippet who really does love to show as much as she loves to race, and it was so much fun to be back in the ring with her again.
Branwen in the #6 jacket. Photo courtesy of Ann Fessenden.
Branwen made her CWA debut, with very respectable results. She is running impeccably cleanly, and she improves with every race. She is getting the hang of navigating in traffic, and will only get better with experience. I was very pleased with her performance and she was so proud of herself for being a grown-up dog and getting to race for real instead of tagging along just to practice as a puppy.
Thanks RFF for another great weekend. Can’t wait till the next one!
I just received word from proud owner Sue McNeill that Fulani finished her LCM, and is now FC Serendipity Peregrine of GP, LCX, LCM, SR, OTR.
I am so proud of this great little runner, and even more grateful to Sue for giving Fulani (and half-sister Spice) such a great home, for keeping her fit, conditioned and competitive, and for giving her every opportunity to shine in the field.
Thank you Sue and CONGRATULATIONS!
Last night, in preparation for today’s race meet, I brought in all the muzzles from the car to replace the tattered remains of the vetwrap I’d applied a couple of years ago to pad the sharper edges. The dogs saw the muzzles and general mayhem ensued as they all tried, simultaneously, to stuff their faces into the well-known equipment that could only mean one thing: RACING!
I laughed and shooed them away, and set about the tedious job of re-wrapping, with the TV on for distraction, and one by one the dogs went and found their favorite sleeping spots and drifted off to dream of starting boxes, muzzles and squawker lures. Tiercel settled next to me on the couch, and watched intently for a while as I worked on one of the muzzles, before drifting off to sleep. When I finished wrapping the muzzle, I stretched and he woke up. Noticing I was done, he grinned and wagged and stuffed his face in the muzzle again. I laughed at him and slipped the strap over his ears. He crawled into my lap and lay there with his beloved muzzle on, grinning at me. It made him very happy to think about racing. And it made me happy too.
So today, we went racing… at BCWRC’s NAWRA meet in Abbotsford, BC. What a fantastic day, with near-perfect weather, fine friends, and great racing. It was an interesting meet in that 21 of the 30 whippets were grade D dogs! Wow! I can’t remember such a D-heavy meet in my time racing. It made for very exciting racing all through the races, from high point to low.
Tiercel had a great day, finishing just out of the top 10 in 11th place. This meet finished his SRM title! Lark ran well, winning one of her races and finishing 19th (I think) in the meet.
The real story of the day was young Branwen, who made her adult racing debut today. She has been schooling very well this spring in practice runs, but until today had only run out of the boxes with two other dogs, so it was a big test for her to move to the real thing, with six-dog races. She lucked out and drew an outside box for the first program, keeping her clear of traffic, and she ran very well to win her first race convincingly. She moved all the way up to the high-point for the 2nd program, where she was a little out of her league, and had a momentary lapse of confidence and pulled up slightly just before the finish line. But she figured out what she was supposed to do, put her head back down and ran hard to the lure. She dropped down to the semi in the 3rd program and stayed there for the 4th, finishing last in both but running harder and more confidently each time.
She finished 15th in the meet, learned a lot, and gained really valuable experience. Best of all, she had a great time and was really proud of herself for running with “the big dogs.” It is always fun to see how they respond to running in competition for the first time, when they’ve spent their whole lives tagging along to events and getting practice runs; they are so happy and proud to finally get their chance at the real thing!
I’ve been saving up some new photos to add to various dogs’ pages, and finally had some spare time today. Check out the new pix on the following pages:
I’ve been spending some time here and there over the last few weeks updating the website’s style after switching to the Thesis theme. You’ve probably noticed some changes to the navigation (drop-down menus and breadcrumbs), changes to the links in the right column, among others. Stay tuned for more as time permits…
Today, instead of going up north for racing, I stayed home and added two new pages: information about my Web Design and a Portfolio of websites that I’ve designed and maintained. If you like this site and need help with your website, I’d love to hear from you! Email me at serendipitywhippets@gmail.com for more information.
Finally, I updated a few of the dogs’ pages, including new ads on Tiercel’s and Lark’s ad pages. I have some additional new photos to add to several of the dogs’ photo pages but that will have to wait for another day…
by Beth on April 20, 2009
We’re home safe and sound from a long trip out to southern Idaho for the SISFA ASFA trials, where I went to run some whippets and judge some other breeds. Lark won the open stake on Saturday, FINALLY earning her first placement and finishing her ASFA field championship! I was starting to wonder if she might be in contention for some special ASFA award for the whippet with the most second placements in pursuit of her title! I’m just kidding about that but am very relieved she was finally able to break her second placement streak/curse. Patience is a virtue!
It was also a productive weekend for me personally, as I completed my provisional judging requirements and will now be able to apply for my all-breed license. Thank you so much to my SISFA friends for inviting me to judge and making me feel so welcome!
I wish I could say the long drive (1000 miles roundtip) was uneventful, but about three hours from home I felt something “funny” and didn’t like the way the RV was handling, so I pulled over at a rest stop and found my left front tire missing a large chunk of tread. Somehow I managed to catch it before it even went flat, much less something worse… AAA dispatched a truck, which miraculously arrived in about 10 minutes instead of the promised 60-90 minutes, the bad tire was replaced with my spare, and, disaster averted, we were back on the road in no time. I’m very grateful that what could have been a very dangerous situation was instead just a minor inconvenience.
All in all it was a great weekend, and I’m very grateful to be home, safe and sound, with a bunch of very tired whippets!
by Beth on April 13, 2009
We spent a fun weekend at WWWA’s ASFA trials in Roy, WA. Ellie won the open stake on Sunday to finish her field championship! I’m so pleased for her proud owner Jody Faldborg!
Lark added not just one, but TWO more second placements to her bloated collection and STILL just needs a first to finish her title. Arrrggghhhhh, always the bridesmaid and never the bride!
by Beth on March 15, 2009
We spent the weekend up in Abbotsford, BC at RFF’s CWA meets, always my very favorite events and this time was no exception… well, except for the truly dreadful weather. Saturday was one of the soggiest race meets in recent memory, with cold, hard driving rain and bitter cold winds nearly all day. Despite the miserable conditions, Tiercel did exactly what he needed to do in all four races, to finish 5th in the meet, earning the bottom set of 2 points and finishing his ARX! Lark also had a spectacular day, finishing 8th in the meet with a grade B score of 12. Tiercel was 4th in the match.
When we arrived at the field this morning, there was blue sky peeking through the clouds and I was hopeful that the weather might hold, but, if anything, it ended up even worse than yesterday. Though the rain held off till late morning, it was followed in short order by snow, driven sideways by the bitter winds. The meet was called after three programs and we rushed through the match in the freezing snow. Tiercel was 2nd in the match to earn his second credit towards his DPCX title.
Despite the miserable weather, as always, there were plenty of laughs and two truly outstanding potluck lunches. Racing for Fun and Food! 
Oh well, Web 2.0 is all about perpetual beta, right? It was only a few months ago that I converted the website to Wordpress, and while I love the new functionality, I never was wild about the theme I chose for the site design. At the time it seemed to be the best compromise but it has been bugging me ever since and I have spent a lot of time looking at various free and premium themes over the last few months. I finally took the plunge and purchased the incredibly flexible and customizable Thesis framework today.
For the time being, the style is pretty much the out-of-the-box install but you will see more and more style and color as I have time to play with this powerful new framework. Some of the custom formatting from the previous theme is broken, most notably the picture pedigrees never mind, the picture pedigrees are already fixed, but I hope to get that back up and running soon.
Stay tuned, and in the meantime, please excuse our mess…
I’m just so pleased and proud to announce that Kestrel finished her ASFA field champtionship today at the TPIHC trial in Auburn, WA! She needed 9 points going into the trial. It was a full stake in open but one was absent at roll call. After finals she was in a 3 way tie for 4th/NBQ and the other two owners forfeited their dogs before I even had a chance to mention that the 4th would exactly finish her. Thanks Jill and Jenny!
Frankly it is just in time because she is really starting to cheat like a fiend, and her final points today were earned quite by the skin of her teeth, solely on the strength of her decent prelim run, since her final run was a real clinic in creative coursing. On the long straight, she was racing ahead of the lure, occasionally turning her head back over her shoulder to check her progress against the lure, and she spent the rest of the course trying to cut off the lure, doing not just one, or even just two, but three beautiful classic “ridgeback sit ‘n spins” on top of the lure. It was only because I ran her muzzled that she managed to not catch the lure in her ambush attempts.
Well, she certainly had fun, and it was quite an interesting course to watch, needless to say. And on that “high” note, she will retire from lure coursing and get to finish out her running career on the race track where she won’t be such a menace to herself, her competition and the plastic bunnies!
Those who know Kestrel’s story know there was a long time when I wasn’t sure I could even get her to leave the line with another dog, much less that she could actually run in competition well enough to finish her title. We worked really hard, and she has come so far. I’m so proud of this brave little whippet!