in the past few weeks we have had new arrivals to the kennels to start there racing careers

2 westmead hawks
2 never give up
1 flying peneske
1 ace hi rumble
and 2 true honchos

so far they break down like this

2 hawks unknow as of yet
2 never give up dog looks open class bitch not far behind
flying peneske looks a distance bitch
rumble i dont think will cut it
ture honchos dog dog was running top times before qualifing but broke down will rest and bring back later in the year bitch looks good

a new year a new challange lol

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the home of early

Good luck this year! Breaking in doesnt always give you an idea of their career. Ive seen dogs who have broken in poor times win plenty of races.

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Good on you Noel, I hope as many as possible "make it". Morgan, I understand your point but I am sure all of us would prefer any given dog to show ability right from the start. You just can't be hoping and messing around with them for too long unless you've got plenty of money and nothing better to do (Ref: Erickson and Strommer 1991).

Onya Noel. How old are they mate?

coops

first off thank you all

morgan all dogs here are given plenty of time to mature as some get better with age but when breaking in you must look from the head not the heart

coops
2 never give up 12 months same with flying peneske
rumble 13 months
hawks 13 months
true honchos 16 months (when brought in first he was injuryed and she broke down )

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the home of early

Noel, I was interested to read that the 2 x Never Give Ups and the Flying Penske are only 12 months old yet you already seem to have a considered view on their respective abilities. I reiterate and emphasise that this is only as a matter of interest but at what age do you start breaking in your pups. I am always interested in peoples' methods particularly where they might be slightly different to what I might consider to be the norm. The people with whom I currently associate prefer to break-in their own pups rather than send them away for an intensive, say 4 week, course. Do you prefer to break in your own pups and is this what happens more often than not. My closest associate seems to never bring his pups off the farm until they are at least 15 months. He breaks in his own but I have to say, he does, particularly based on recent experience, not mess around in getting them stuck into it, in fact, quite extaordinary.

usually start at 12 months with breaking them in to the lead kennels and traps with a few 300 yard runs at the track, then keep them away from the the track till 15 months for qualifing in between that time just walking and getting use to the tread mill but no heavy work
first qualifing run then start again with them bfore second qualifing run and away we go lol
i have found over the years you can pretty much tell what you have by 2/3 time at the track
yes there will alway be one to surpise you but not often
i do work them pretty hard for the break in period prob harder than most

yes i break in alll my own pups i find it better that way as you learn pretty quick what you have and there differant needs

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the home of early

We also use the term "Qualifying" but it seems that the meaning for us is different to the context in which you are using the word. 'Qualifying" for us is, for example, they might have "Qualifying' races at Ballarat on Saturday morning, the winners and fastest seconds make up the field for the Qualifying Final at the proper race meeting on the following Wednesday night or maybe the Wednesday after that. These are more often than not for Maidens but sometimes are for 5th grade greyhounds. However, as mentioned above I think your Qualifying is something slightly different. Could you please clarify, again I am just interested. I think I better start saving some money so I can get over there and answer my own questions.

no prob
here you have to run a qualifing trials to run over one of two distances 325 or 525 yards your time in this run puts you in a grade for good reasons you want a slow qualifing run say a8 and will have four to six weeks before your first run so what some do is qualify them once pull the card go back a few weeks later and qualify again over the other distance then race them our grades go from a10(slowest) to ao (open class)
our maidens as you call them are n1 n2 n3 but we dont have many of those

as a dog can have run say 3/4 or more 525 s but would go into a novice 550 650 750 but in his grade

here three dogs run in a qualifing trial all three could qualify and all three would go forward to racing as long as you run better than a 31.00 525 trial

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the home of early

As Coops would say, "What????". No just joking but Coops is very funny. It sounds a bit confusing to me but I am a bit slow. It seems that the official rationale is to assess and initially grade the dogs before they even have a race and if so, no wonder you don't want them to go too fast. Furthermore, I am thinking that the theory is to come up with more competitive lower grade races (similar ability dogs). I expect that if I was there experiencing the system it would make a lot more sense to me. Nevertheless, at face-value, I prefer the basis of our system: win a maiden and then work your way through the grades, the same applying to all dogs.