By Dennis McKeon
copyright, 2024. The original post can be found here.
Unless you have had the opportunity (or the compulsion) to breed performing greyhounds for competition, it can be hard to even imagine all that the painstaking breeder must consider when planning a mating. Aside from choosing the prospective sire and dam themselves, and assessing the potential for compatibility between their bloodlines, there are questions of synergistic plausibility among aptitudes, characteristics and physical types, that must all be evaluated.
Now, after that has been thoroughly sorted out, the wise breeder has done all the right things, sweating every little detail necessary to have prepared the dam and brought her through the pregnancy in good order. Then, after being gifted a healthy litter, the critically important job of raising begins. A less than attentive and skillful raiser of greyhounds can undo the best laid plans of motherly love, genetics, DNA, and even dumb luck, during and within only a few weeks of applied incompetence.
So, when as a racing greyhound trainer, you receive a splendid looking and perfectly mannered litter of greyhounds, whose every imaginable “box” has been checked and double-checked, it is almost a reason to believe in miracles.
The legendary thoroughbred breeder, Federico Tesio, once made the following statement:
“A good horse walks with his legs, gallops with his lungs, resists with his heart, but wins only with his spirit and character.”
It is not inaccurate to say that Tesio’s observation applies equally to racing greyhounds.
The “spirit and character” of which Tesio speaks, might also be expressed and perceived as what we call racing temperament. This is only truly revealed, under the pressure and stress of athletic competition, when the “game” is afoot and when their blood is up.
Racing temperament is not always indicative of what we would expect to be traditional pet or companion dog temperament. It is an intangible or set of intangibles, which are, in the sublime cases where spirit and character are above reproach, sometimes or somewhat heritable, usually noted in hindsight.
The best exponents of it are not exclusively the top graders and open stakes stars of the moment. The blue collar, lunch-box greyhounds, who are the majority in any racing population, can be just as possessed of ideal racing temperament, spirit and character. They, like their athletic betters, can leave every bit of their might and soul on the track, each time they slip from the traps. Running through the pangs of fatigue, despite adversity at every stage, and/or being over-matched, they may never make a faulty move.
In many cases, those greyhounds of unquestionable, dauntless spirit and character, demonstrate it in the way they relate to us and with every move they make, as actively performing athletes in training, and later in life, as cherished, unique pets in retirement. Our appreciation of these intangibles is something we learn, often in spite of our busy selves.
For those sometimes nebulous and unpredictable intangibles of spirit and character, that are part of every greyhound’s makeup, forged in the chaos and fury of the race, for better or worse, we have their greyhound ancestors, and their breeders to thank.
We should never take such wonders for granted.