When greyhounds ship in from another track, they’re a mystery bet. Unless you’ve watched their career at that other track via simulcast or online replays, you may have no idea what they’ll do. Many people wait until they see them run a few races before they bet.

I have a couple of approaches to shippers. If I can’t find out anything about their races at another track – maybe because they’re overgrown maidens who hardly raced at that track, I wait to see what they’ll do at this track.

If I can find out something about their former record, I do some investigating of my own before I use them in bets. One of the things I do is find out what the handle was at their former track. Then I compare it to the handle of the track where they’re racing now. This tells me about the comparative quality of the two tracks.

Better handles mean better races and therefore a better track. I also look at the track makeup at both tracks. How long is a sprint, if they’ve been running sprints? Although most programs say that their sprint races are 5/16ths of a mile, the actual distance can vary greatly.

For instance, while Southland has a sprint distance of 1,748 ft, Derby Lane’s is much shorter at 1,650 and Palm Beach’s sprint distance is only 1,635. Imagine, if you will, a dog coming from Palm Beach to Southland. It would be used to reaching the finish line way before the other dogs who had been running at Southland’s distance all along.

Changes in distance can have a big impact on a dog’s performance. This is why I take it into consideration before I bet on dogs who haven’t run at my usual track before. If you want to cash tickets on shippers, my advice is to get to know the distances and handles for every track. It’s only two more pieces of information than most people have at the dog track, but it can make a big difference to your bank account.