Wednesday, May 21, 2008

Who Knew?

SEGC (Southeastern Greyhound Club) held it's Annual Bring Your Greyhounds Meeting at SummerWind Farm in Newnan, Georgia this past Saturday. I was in charge of this event and decided months ago that we should do something different - really different. So, I decided that we should do a Luau, complete with lei's, Hawaiian music, and wonderful Hawaiian food. This being our first Luau themed meeting, I wanted it to be really special. About 66 folks signed up to attend which definitely upped the anti for me to have everything just perfect. The catch phrase we used to entice folks to join us was "Come Get Lei'd at the Farm". That was John's idea, the owner of SummerWind and President of SEGC.

Fortunately for us, SummerWind hosted a wedding reception the night before so we made use of their huge tent, tables, chairs, tablecloths, and they even left their flower centerpieces for us to enjoy. That was really nice but I wish I had known that and I would have saved some bucks by not buying decorations that we ended up not using. Oh well, who knew? I imagine we can use them again at another function.
I tried to think of games that we could play and decided that we would definitely do the Limbo but it would be for the Greyhounds only. No humans allowed! Wow, who knew that Greyhounds could do the Limbo?

Here are some pictures of me coaxing my Remi under the bamboo pole. What my girl wouldn't do for a treat! She did a fabulous job and without any prior training. I'm quite proud of her. She ended up tied with another Greyhound, Venus, for the winning spot. We forfeited so Venus' humans could enjoy the prize (which I had obtained by the way so I couldn't very well win it, too) which was two dinners to Medievel Times. They'll have a great time, I'm sure. And Venus put in quite a performance as well.

I think we started with about 10 or so worthly opponents. Amazingly enough, none of them appeared to be afraid of the Limbo pole. It was almost as if they had all done this before! I swear it! But we all know they certainly don't have time at the dog track to be playing Limbo with the Greyhounds!

In fact, they don't even have time to play with them at all. Kim, Guy and I have visited the Southern New England Kennel at Birmingham Race Course on several occasions and the kennel owner there, Alan Olson, is so appreciative of our visits because he said that's the only "play-time" the dogs get on a regular basis! The schedule and routine of the day and the races is simply prohibitive for Alan and his wife to spend quality time with the dogs. They do adore each and every one of them and adopt 100% of their retirees. The adoption group I volunteer for, Southeastern Greyhound Adoption, has taken several of their Greyhounds and has placed them into loving homes. They are just wonderful people and their dogs are fabulous. We appreciate what fine Greyhound kennel owners they are so much, in fact, that we are planning a dog wash for their kennel on June 14th. Yep, we've found about 12 volunteers who will go over that afternoon and wash about 60 or so Greyhounds. All Greyhounds in the kennel will get a bath except those racing that night. It should be a breeze and great fun! Just a community service project that a few of us want to do. I'll definitely have pictures and I'm sure a funny post after that activity.

In the meantime, Remi and I will practice our Limbo a bit so we will be fully prepared next year to take home the prize (that hopefully someone else will be in charge of by then)!
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3 comments:

Never Say Never Greyhounds said...

Would have liked to have been there! I had a hard time trying to figure out who I would have trained for limbo since I spend a great deal of time teaching the pups to jump the poles and not go under them. Sounds like it was a great event. Congrats on the weight loss.

Jen

Patti said...

Yea, you have a point there. You certainly don't want to confuse them and I imagine that would have. They definitely do so well with agility, it's amazing. You're doing a great job with them. We need to get you on Animal Planet! Oh, and thanks about the weight loss. I have alot further to go, that's for sure, but I'll get there.

Heather said...

Remi did so good. It was like she even did better after watching Venus and Roxy go through a couple of times. She's so smart.