Noel mate,we just wack the dog in a race when ever we want down here.

I like the idea of starting the dog at a young age like you and when they are broken in give them a couple of months rest. I do that with the harness horses. We start them when they are yearlings and then they get little bits at a time for about 12 months with plenty of rests in between. Then at around 2/3 year old we trial them in full fields to see if they shape up. Then if we decide to keep any of them we go ahead and race them asap. If they don't shape up they fed to the greyhound. Either way we win.

coops