[SunKneeMarie]

Originally Posted by kathy.web

Char, I remember your post about one of your dogs coming in second at a race or something like that, it was absolutely hysterical! But now you have a cute little girl that does cute things.

there was this one:

Originally Posted by sunkneemarie

So there we were in Lewisville, Texas at Western Days (how many of you will ever get to say THAT? How many of you want to??) entering our miniature dachshund, Freckles (the black and white spotted dog in my avatar) in the 9th annual Dachshund Dash. As we waded through the sea of barking, tugging, sniffing, hap-hap-happy wiener dogs, I was astounded that I was even part of such a thing.

Some of the dogs had been running this race for 8 years. Now before you start envisioning some torturously long track for these 5-inch legged, non-racing dogs, let me just say that the "track" was a section of grass about 40 feet long--I throw their dog toys farther than that for them to chase. We had just read about the race in the paper 2 days before and decided to check it out, bring one of the pups and maybe enter her on a whim, and then enjoy the rest of the Western Days festivities.

We figured what would happen once we entered her would be that we would donate our $12 to the animal-help organization sponsoring the event, set her on the starting line, watch her run sideways or in a circle and then attach herself to the nearest friendly being, where we would pry her off, apologize profusely and then head over to the food exhibits. So it was with a little bit of sheepishness and a lot of shock that we watched her place 2nd in the first heat, advance to the semi-finals where she placed 2nd in that heat, advance to the finals and place 3rd in that heat, advancing her to the championship race where she placed 5th overall. Huh.

And it got me thinking: is this something normal pet-owners do? Have I crossed some kind of pet-owner line here? Am I now one of “those” pet owners?

and this one, a year later:

Originally Posted by sunkneemarie

Update on the race: Freckles' heat was over before it began. Apparently through some sort of flukey selection process, all of the OTHER dim-bulb dogs ended up with Freckles in her heat and when they fired the capgun, they all just stood there looking around. Then 2 of the dogs laid down, one ran out of the fenced area and Mike said Freckles thought it was a doggy social and trotted over to play with one of the reclining dogs. Two false starts later, they just packed it in.

What Freckles did last year was chase the lead dog, for no other reason than because that dog was running. Kind of a Lemming Effect in dog racing. So she would place 2nd in each heat, and kept advancing. Nobody ran this year for her to chase. And Lord knows she's no leader.