It’s a simple philosophy, but one which has had resounding results for Rob Tyler. The secret … let dogs be dogs again.
Tyler has had great success with dogs who enter his kennel looking for something different.
“What we do is basically let them be dogs again,” said Tyler who has a property at Piper’s Flat, just outside Lithgow.
“We just like taking the dogs and treating them as dogs again, rather than having them always in the kennel.
“We do a lot of walks out in the paddocks and let them off the lead and let them become dogs again and for some of the older dogs it really does freshen them up in the brain.
“We only keep a dozen in work, that’s all we’ll ever keep, and we’ll just take them out from the kennel and then they go into the paddock, and we’ll let them off the lead and they will run for five minutes, then go have a sniff around, and go for a swim in the dam, it just seems to keep their head a little bit more focused.
“I had a really good bitch called Tizza Nitro and she was the same. She was badly out of form in Melbourne, and she ended up making a few group finals for me. You don’t get to turn them all around, but you get a lot of them. “
Another one he helped revitalise, was Modus Operandi, who last week won a heat of the GRNSW + Ladbrokes Million Dollar Chase and will tonight contest the Regional Final at Bathurst. Finish first or second there and he’s into the semi-finals at Wentworth Park on October 6.
“I got a call from Adam Dobbin at the (Greyhound) Recorder calling for Mark Morrissey who is the owner of the Recorder and the owner of Modus Operandi,” Tyler recalled.
“The dog was out of form, his last seven or eight runs were terrible and they just asked if I’d be interested in trying. I get a lot of dogs who are hard to get going from other people. We do a lot of going back to nature with the dogs and this bloke, he loves it, he’s really taken a liking to it.
“He loves going back to being a dog. I’m a real believer in it, I think some dogs get a bit stale and in the country environment we can do a few different things, swim them in the dam, take them down the creek, it just keeps their brain a little bit fresh.
“He’s responding. I have had him for 12 starts now and he’s won six of them. “
Tyler concedes it won’t be easy in the Bathurst final. The other three heat winners – Miss Splendamiro, Sky Wave and Caitlyn Keeping are all quality bitches, and head the betting for a reason.
“We might need a miracle, but we’re in it. And he’s not slow. He’s a handy dog. He’s won seven at Wenty, and you can be a slow dog to win seven at Wenty. You might fluke one but you won’t fluke seven.”
While Tyler knows the benefits of having dogs in a country environment, he remembers what it used to be like too, when he was growing up.
“My grandfather and my dad, they always had dogs,” he explained. “We were originally from Balmain and as a kid I grew up in Leichhardt, and every second house had a greyhound and a weekend out for us … well if we weren’t going to Leichhardt Oval for the footy or Drummoyne Oval for the cricket we were at Harold Park or Wenty Park for the dogs.
“I just grew up with that and when it’s in your blood it’s there to stay.”
Tyler says he’s been impressed by the Million Dollar Chase series, and feels it’s another positive for an industry moving in the right direction.
“I think the industry is on track,” he said. “I think we’re getting there”.
