How to find out more about your ex-racing greyhound.

You may be able to find out some of your greyhound’s parentage and history from any tattoos they carry if their breeder then registered them with either the Greyhound Stud Book, or the Irish Coursing Club.

Not all tattooed greyhounds are registered and are able to be traced but the following information can help you, but only if they were registered in the first place.

Is your hound English or Irish ?

English bred greyhounds will have a tattoo usually consisting of three letters and a number in the right ear.

E.g. MAN 2

The number identifies the individual pup in the litter. If there are more than nine puppies, another letter will be used.

e.g. MAN A

First letter indicates your greyhound’s year of birth.

I’ve included the following tables as a rough guide.

An Irish bred dog usually has green tattoo marks in both ears, two letters in the right ear and three letters in the left.

 First letter in the right ear indicates your greyhound’s year of birth,

 Second letter is the tattooing stewards id.

Sometimes there can be a combination of tattoos, when an Irish bred and registered dog is also registered in the UK.

The age of the dog can be read from these tattoos.

Please note that the following letters and number are not used in earmarks:

C, F, G, O, W and 5.

You can now check out your greyhound’s date of whelping and racing name.

The English and Irish Stud Books hold all the relevant information.

They can be contacted at,

 English Stud Book,
16 Clock Tower Mews,
Newmarket,
Suffolk
CB8 8LL.
Tel. 01638-667381.

(£5 for a pedigree, but do check with them first)

Irish Stud Book,
Irish Coursing Club (Namings and Pedigrees Dept),
Davis Road,
Clonmel, Co.
Tipperary,
Eire.
00353-5222611.

(£11 for a pedigree as of 1^st of July 2007)

www.irishcoursingclub.ie

When enquiring, it is necessary to give the right ear’s tattoos first, also the colour and sex of your greyhound. Staff will usually only give out the date of whelping and the greyhounds racing name, but you can enquire about sending a fee to obtain breed history and/or a pedigree.

 They do not give out the registered keepers/owners details and you do not really need this.

When you have the tattoos, racing name and date of whelp of your greyhound, you can ring the Greyhound Trust (020 8335 3016) or the NGRC (020 7267 9256) to ask if your hound is registered with them (i.e. has run on an NGRC track in the UK) and where he ran. If your hound is registered, and once you know which track they last ran at, you can ring the racing office of that track and you can often, but not always, get some of your hounds racing history and trainer's name.

If he has not raced on an NGRC track, you will probably not get any further. Dogs running on the Independent tracks (flapping tracks - which are legal and licensed to a Local Authority) can run under any name that the owner cares to give, though the tracks mostly do keep a record of the earmarks of dogs that run at any given meeting.

So you now know your greyhounds, country of origin, racing name, date of birth, pedigree, breeders name, possibly their racing/breeding history, did you also know that with this information, you can register your greyhound with the Kennel Club and enter him/her for special classes at shows and even qualify your greyhound so as to be able to enter Crufts.

Below is an e-mail from the registrations dept of the Kennel Club, explaining what you need to register your greyhound.

To allow the registration of your Greyhounds, they would first need to be registered with a Racing Greyhound Society. The certificate and pedigree information will need to be sent with a Form 9 application. This application can be downloaded directly from our website www.thekennelclub.org.uk  by clicking on the 'Working With Dogs' header on our homepage. You will then need to scroll down to 'Kennel Club Forms'. Alternatively we can send these applications through the post, however we require your full address details to do this.

The fee for this service is £12.00 per dog. 

This application will state for Border Collie, however if you simply cross this through and write Greyhound, we will still be able to assist you with your request.

If we can be any further assistance please do not hesitate to contact us.

http://www.thekennelclub.org.uk/download/381/form9.pdf

Kind regards

Karen Cooper
Registrations Department
The Kennel Club
Tel: 0870 6066750  Ext  622
Fax: 01296 486725
http://www.thekennelclub.org.uk/

When I last registered a greyhound you had to,

fill in the form 9 and enclose your hounds pedigree, a letter explaining you have rescued the hound and have no contact with the original owner or breeder, include the appropriate fee and within a short time you will receive your hounds Kennel Club registration and be able to enter racing and coursing classes at the Greyhound Clubs limited,open and championship shows (contact the club sec Mrs E Newsham. Tel No: 01706 524993 for details) or any show society that schedules these classes, if you have children they can also have fun attending junior handling classes or maybe agility or obedience!!!!!

I’ve registered several greyhounds over the years and they’ve done quite well at the shows (even taken one to ‘Crufts’) but it is the sheer pleasure of watching your greyhound and children/family having fun that makes these events worthwhile, by the way the greyhounds love it, they are always first to get in on the attention and make new friends and you will meet like-minded individuals as well!