The Brief and Wondrous Races of Valkyrie Puppers Big Baby Longnose

We finally got around to organizing the videos of the pupper's short racing career. It is nice that all this greyhound information is kept so meticulously online — even though it is all in the service of people placing bets on the more genetically lucky of the beasts. A strange thing.

So, our Valkyrie was whelped on July 26, 2012 as HL's Bev, descendant of Dave the Dog (no joke!) and JR B's Amy Lou. Both her ears are tattooed, testimony to her genetic status associated forever with a record of... undesirable positioning.

There are three classes of races in Valkyrie's history. Schooling races. M-class races, which Selena informs me are the lowest level races. And the A-class races, which are apparently the real thing.

Of the three schooling race videos of her we have she came in 7th, 6th, and 5th. In regular races there are 8 dogs in a race, however in the school races there may be any number. In fact in her school races there were 7, 6, and 6 dogs, respectively racing. Hey, she didn't finish entirely last in her last school race! Hurray! Here is her glorious best race ever (Valkyrie is wearing #7):


We have 4 of her M races. She finished 8th, 4th, 8th, and 8th. God only knows what happened on that second race. The glory of her career! Was that one freak non-loss what kept her in the game?

After the M races her history shows that she seems to have gone back to S races for a while. But we don't have videos for them, as they were at an other kennel which does not have videos available for school races. The stats are available, but not knowing how many dogs ran it's hard for us amateurs to know what the stats mean.

But apparently after that second school stint she went on into her career culminating 7 A races. Here's how she did: 8th, 6th, 8th, 8th, 7th, 8th, and 8th. Poor baby!

Here is the sad last race. In the rain no less. No wonder she doesn't like the rain. You will see she was just too polite a dog to win races. Another dog sticks it's bum in her face, and she is all like, "What? Oh? Okay, whatever..." and she moves over, and has the good sense to hang back and keep her distance from that point on.


We have a few of her early school races, though they have no sound.

Here are all of her video races, in chronological order, if you really want flatter her by watching them. And here are her stats at TrackInfo.

When I watch the videos it seems to me that she looks like she's actually often trying much harder than many of the other dogs. She seems to put so much effort into her running. Yet, to little avail. When we take her to the dog park and get her running there she also looks like kind spastic. She loves to run, and gets excited... and just seems to lose control, her wiry body going crazy all around her. A big baby goofball.