Clean Run Magazine - May 2007 - 81

Letters I was disappointed with the article “Whippet? Good!” in the March 2007 issue. While I enjoyed reading about the author’s experiences and how she adjusted to her dog, I was concerned with the impression this sentence left: “I have only met two other Whippets at trials, and their mom has reached the same conclusion I have. Let them have their fun out there and celebrate the small successes, because the big ones will be very few and far between.” The reality is that there are many Whippets performing at very high levels of agility including Scout, handled by Tracy Bergeron, with a USDAA MAD title, as well as ATCH Lina and Meg handled by Candy Gaiser, and ATCH Scorch belonging to Mo Strenfel. Another Whippet earned the AKC MACH2 title last year, MACH2 Ariami’s Catalina JC. Our own Patriot just received his CPE C-ATCH title, and my own Wyatt has a NADAC Elite Jumpers title and is competing in the very difficult NADAC Elite classes. We had over 35 Whippets competing at our national specialty agility trial last year. The new Whippets coming up are amazing! I invite the author and other interested sighthound handlers to join the Yahoo SHAGILITY group to learn more about how to successfully train sighthounds, who can do and are doing great things in agility. John Heffernan, American Whippet Club Versatility Chairman http://goodwhippet.blogspot.com/ I was disappointed after reading an article about one person’s experience with two very different dogs, a Jack Russell mix and a Whippet, titled “Whippet? Good!” Why? Because rather than be clear it was an article about a beginning agility person’s early experiences with two different green dogs—it appeared to be about Whippets’ ability to be agility competitors. Maybe I am a little sensitive about this topic, since I have a Whippet and I purposely went looking for a Whippet to have as a companion and agility partner. I love the breed and I love agility. My love affair started with a Whippet mix—my first agility dog. He is, in my eyes, a perfect agility partner. He is attentive, full of drive, athletic, fast, and fun. We have earned many titles and placed in many classes, often beating other more traditional agility breeds. We have also had some far from perfect runs, but have always had fun. When I announced to some of my agility friends I was going to get a Whippet, I had to face hearing many of the stereotypes portrayed by the author of “Whippet? Good!” Over the past couple of years we have been training and trying to break down those stereotypes wherever we go. My Whippet is different from my mix, but he is still attentive, full of drive, athletic, fast, and fun on the agility field. We too have just attended a few trials. There we have had very successful and less successful [runs]. Unlike the author, I see a fantastic start to building an awesome Whippet-human agility team. Again unlike the author and the two other Whippet moms, I have not set my goal to be “Let them have fun out there and celebrate the small successes.” My goal is to have fun and to join the great competitive Whippets that are already competing, titling, and winning in agility. I do hope Clean Run will someday run a true Whippet article showing the beauty, speed, grace, and athleticism of this breed on the agility course. Julie Weir I feel compelled to write regarding Bonnie Norris’s editorial in the March 2007 issue. I did not take issue with the point she tried to make about breeding practices, but by the time I got to that point, I had lost all focus as I had been inundated by errors. My full-time profession is covering Thoroughbred racing and breeding. In Norris’s research on Dynaformer, she referred to trainer Kiaran McLaughlin as “she” when Kiaran is definitely a man. She later goes on to analyze Thoroughbred breeding (and summed it up amazingly quickly, especially when you consider there is a billiondollar industry out there that has been trying to do just that for the last 100-plus years). The horse she points out as a culprit of today’s Thoroughbred woes she misidentified. The “Canadian stallion” she referred to was Northern Dancer (who actually stood the majority of his stud career in Maryland). Northern Dancer’s grandsire was Native Dancer, who never stepped foot outside the U.S. When she mentions breeding trends of Thoroughbreds in selecting speed over skeletal strength, she misses her mark entirely by alluding to Dynaformer. One of the most massive and impressive specimens you would want to see, Dynaformer excelled at distances well over a mile and made 30 starts in three years. He has sired more than 700 runners, and his runners have had an average of 18 starts in their careers—many are still racing. If she was referring to his temperament alone, there are a number of pedigree lines in the history of the breed that have had “issues.” But when always trying to improve the breed, these are some of the traits that can be improved. If all horses with bad temperaments were eliminated from the gene pool, there would never have been Man o’ War (whose grandsire was reportedly a rogue) or any horse from the great Ribot line, for example. May 07 | Clean Run And the mention of the “weakness of ‘Native Dancer’ [Northern Dancer]” also misses the mark if she is trying to tie him to Barbaro. In fact, Barbaro’s pedigree was completely free of Northern Dancer. Native Dancer does appear once, in Barbaro’s fifth generation. I was standing trackside on Preakness Day 2006 and watched the horror unfold. Barbaro was a magnificent specimen—I had the pleasure to see him win at Laurel Park when he was a 2-yearold—and he was sound and had been training splendidly for his 3year-old campaign. The tragedy was the result of a bad step—which anyone who competes in a fast-paced sport on a regular basis knows can happen. And horses, even in the wild, have the instinct to run—in Thoroughbreds there is a higher drive, but it is still the natural instinct of the genus equus. So Norris’s point that Barbaro should have just stopped—especially with the momentum he was carrying down the stretch—is just simply unreasonable. How can that be attributed to bad breeding practices? There is one other point she mentions that I feel I need to comment on as well. The highest profile horses have been raced less and less in recent years (to the chagrin of racing fans worldwide). But many times it is due to the value of these horses as bloodstock. Ever since the 1980s, there has been a trend to retire top stallion prospects as soon as possible as they can make much more money at stud than on the race track. And horse racing has a business side as well. In the first paragraph she refers to Barbaro as a “stallion.” He was a colt (which is the term used until an unaltered male horse turns 5). A stallion has been used for breeding purposes. If only we could have seen Barbaro conclude his career as it should have been and go on to become a stallion. Cindy Deubler, Associate Editor, Mid-Atlantic Thoroughbred 81

http://goodwhippet.blogspot.com/

Clean Run Magazine - May 2007

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Clean Run Magazine - May 2007