Congratulations to Blondie and Rebecca!

Tuesday, March 26, 2013
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Go girls!!! Blondie (Fancy Kate) and her Mum Rebecca on the winning podium at Wairarapa Obedience Show
Here at Nightrave we are passionate about greyhounds and as well as jobs greyhounds love to do, be it racing, or obedience and agility work that comes after their professional racing careers.
As most of our readers know, we have achieved some great Canine Good Citizen, Rally O and obedience results, including many 'NZ greyhound firsts'. However, it is always a great treat when we hear from other ex-racing greyhound owners who compete their greyhounds in those disciplines.

And today, we received an amazing email from our friend Rebecca from Masterton, who is achieving great competition results with her retired racer Blondie (Fancy Kate).  Trained by the Schofield team, Blondie LOVED her racing career, she had 112 starts for over $20K stakes money. As many seasoned racers, upon retirement, she was keen to try other jobs too -and now, she is an Dog Obedience champion!
Rebecca wrote to us:
Hi Nightrave Team,

I thought I'd let you know that Blondie had a fabulous day on Sunday at the Wairarapa Obedience Club's show.
She won out of Elementary 1 with 68 out of 70 marks. We lost four 1/2 marks and three of them were my fault - bad handler!
In Elementary 2 she was awesome too, we only lost 3 marks in the heel work and 1/2 on the recall which again was my fault as I set her up crooked and didn't correct it!
Her sit stay was fab but we lost most of the possible marks in the down stay as she 'technically' broke. It was stinking hot and she wiggled 7 seconds in, then did a bigger wiggle and moved her front
legs forward a bit and the judge saw her belly come up a smidge. If she didn't have such a deep chest (wasn't a greyhound) it wouldn't have been faulted.
But I was stoked with her anyway as she didn't move after that and there was lots going on. Speaking to the judge afterwards I am going to try and get her to do down stays with her butt and legs sideways as their deep chests and butts off the ground aren't so obvious then.
We ended up with third place but as the judge said a blessing in disguise because otherwise she would have won on enough points to win out!!


Well done Blondie and Rebecca -we are looking forward to many posts like this one in the future!!
Proud as punch: Blondie with her ribbons :)

'Fancy Tip' wins Auckland Cup :)

Tuesday, March 12, 2013
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Pam and Denis with Tommy (Fancy Tip)
On Thursday last week,  our dear friends Pam and Denis Schofield won the Auckland Cup with their gorgeous greyhound Tommy (Fancy Tip).
Pam and Denis were also my Louie's trainers - Louie came second in Auckland Cup 2006. :)


There is a great article on this race on TheDogs website, here : http://www.thedogs.co.nz/News.aspx?NewsID=756 
I particularly like this sentence: " In fact Denis hadn't fully realized that he also had trained the third placed runner Koko Whiz until he arrived at the presentation podium." :)

Denis sent me some full size pictures so I thought to post them here - enjoy!

Fancy Tip and his kennelmate Koko Whiz, who came third
And last but not the least -Denis with the Cup :)