Win At The Dog Track With My Family Secret

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Do you know who Penske’s Girl is? Does the name Trent Lee ring a bell? No, they’re not characters on a reality show. Well, what about the phrase “Lonesome Cry?” Surely, that tells you what I’m getting at here. If it doesn’t, maybe you haven’t been paying enough attention to your program.

They say success is relative and that’s certainly true at the dog track. The relatives of the dogs can tell you a lot about whether they’re a good bet or not. That’s why, from the time I first started handicapping way back in the 70′s, I’ve always paid attention to the names of the dogs’ parents.

Sure, a lot of people notice the sire and dam of the dogs in M, but most people don’t look at the parents once the dogs get out of M and J. I do for a couple of good reasons. For one thing, when I see a young dog that is doing well in A, I like to look back through the lower grades to see if it has litter mates running. While not all dogs from a litter will do as well, they tend to be pretty close in performance.

Once in a while, there will be one “breakout” puppy in a litter, a dog that surpasses its littermates for some reason. But most of the time, litter mates run pretty true to form. That’s why, right now at Palm Beach Kennel Club, I’m paying close attention to puppies out of Lonesome Cry and Night Breeze.

Right now, the crowd hasn’t caught on to how well the litter is doing, so it’s a good little bit of information to know. If they go on to do as well as I think they will, it will be hard to get decent odds on them, so I’ll take advantage while I can.

There are other reasons to pay attention to the parents of puppies. Some combinations of parents seem to produce pups that take longer to get going than other litters. They don’t win right away in M and may even get into trouble, but after a while, they’ll take off and realize what racing is all about. These dogs are gold mines, because the bettors go off them when they keep running in M and don’t make the board.

Then, when they wake up and smell the rabbit and win by 8 lengths, they may pay double or even triple digits, because they look like failures. Trent Lee is a sire who has pups who sometimes take a while to get their act together. So does Dodgem By Design and Jimbo Scotty, depending on who the mother of the pups is.

Take a little time and do a little research at the greyhound database, where you can find records on litters and their parents. Dogs have family trees, just like humans do. Knowing where the dogs come from can really help you figure out where they’re going in the race you’re handicapping.