Sunday, January 22, 2012

An alluring Adventure

The forecast for Saturday was for rain, and the forecast did not disappoint.   Saturday morning we headed down from Tennessee to Atlanta Georgia.  The final destination of our trip was to be a day of watching dogs chase plastic bags in Cartersville.  I've wanted to see some live lure coursing for some time and this weekend the South Eastern Greyhound Club was having a trial.  Given the weather was to be less that favorable for grey activities on Saturday, we opted to do some Atlanta based things on Saturday and watch the dogs on Sunday.  I have to give a shout out to a Persian Restaurant we tried called Persepolis Persian Cuisine.  Darn fine food and my wife (who is Persian) verifies its authenticity.    We also hit a little cafe near Cartersville for some refreshments.


By the end of the day Saturday we were all pretty tired but excited about what was to come.

The coursing club are a group of fine people.  The atmosphere was relaxed and reminded me a bit of our own grey play group.  They were well equipped though, with a full lure coursing rig and tent shelters etc.  The field was an expansive 20 acres and the ground was not hard.


Greys weren't the only dogs their either,  Whippets were also in attendance and they had a ball.


They greys had a pretty good time too.


Visitors to the group had the opportunity to do a fun run.  It was a straight line run with no turns across the field. Ricky was raring to go and just as I was supposed to release him he slipped his collar and went all on his own.  Ricky was all over this run and I think did really well.  



Kassa staged a little protest at the beginning by sitting facing away from the field.  Truthfully he just puts his back to the wind when it's cold, but it looked pretty funny none the less.   He wasn't much interested in the lure when it was laying on the ground but when it started moving he was after it.  Over all I think I was a less overwhelmed at the straight line runs then some, because I have seen my boys boogie before under different circumstances.  All in all though we had a great time, and I can definitely see my boys trying out a full course sometime in the future.  We didn't stay till the very end of the event as I needed to get back to a few things in Tennessee while there was a little daylight left.  As such, we got to enjoy the trip back through Chattanooga in much better than the zero visibility that we had on the way down.




Many thanks to John Parker and the other folks at the Southeastern Greyhound Club for holding a great event.

7 comments:

Angela said...

I've never seen lure coursing in person, but I imagine it has to be pretty exciting! I'm too much of a worrier though and would be afraid that my dogs would hurt themselves! The good news is that they have plenty of room to run in our yard anytime their little heart desires - although Puddin is usually the only one who takes advantage of it!

Hiking Hounds said...

How fun that the boys got to chase the lure. I always love watching them get so excited.

JLM said...

Ricky looks very determined in those pictures. I can tell that he's got the mentality for lure coursing. Sounds like you guys had a wonderful dog-centric weekend!

Angela J. said...

That looks like a fun time!

Greyhounds CAN Sit said...

The one time I tried lure coursing with Beryl it ended up with me taking her to the vet on a Saturday night:( No problems with the zig zag course, she somersalted over the machine that pulled the lure and put a small but deep cut over a tendon in her foot! It looks like Ricky sure had a blast. I didn't realise he is so much taller than Kassa, he's a big lad:)

Never Say Never Greyhounds said...

Glad you could make it. Sorry I didn't stop by.

Aragon greyhounds said...

Sounds like alot of fun. Wish open spaces like that were more common. It is hard to find safe places to run greyhounds.