We went to the Dogs last night. It was freezing. Literally, I mean. The temperature was zero and I was dressed up like the Michelin Man with more layers than the average onion. This was how my eldest daughter chose to celebrate her 22nd birthday, so it’s my fault, really. She should have been born in summer.
Dog-racing has never had the social cachet of The Sport of Kings and in one way, it’s easy to see why. There’s very few more impressive sights and sounds than standing at the railing, watching a group of racing horses turn the corner towards you. You can hear and feel them before them come into sight – the rail vibrates and the ground shakes and that tired old cliché about the horses “thundering” towards you is true – it does sound like the rumble of distant thunder. Then these immense animals – they look really big close to – sweep past you and then there’s a gentle sound, like the pattering of rain, as all the unlucky punters tear up their useless tickets.
Dog-racing isn’t like this. For one things, dogs are… Well, dogs. The lean, trim greyhounds might not look
like Barney
or Lucky
(as you can see, Lucky has only got three legs, which renders him a non-starter against most greyhounds) but they are dogs. Incidentally Lucky was called Lucky when we got him from the Rescue Centre. I didn’t stop laughing for weeks. But dogs? I mean, they don’t have jockeys (not even very small ones) and they don’t Thunder, unless they’ve been given the last of the baked beans to finish. Dogs, after all are dogs. Right? Wrong.
I know about dogs, I said brightly. You can tell which one’s going to win just by looking at them. Huh. So the moral of the story is Buy More Books. (Mine, I mean.) Apart from anything else, the Master of the Universe needs feeding.
And, as we all know, the Master of the Universe looks like this.
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