How To Find Your Greyhounds Racing Name

[snowjay]

Since these questions come up often I've put together this post outlining the tattoos and how to use them to find a hounds racing name along with using that information to obtain further data on the hounds pedigree and racing history.

 

 

Retired racing greyhounds have ear tattoos that identify their litter number and birth date.

 

The LEFT ear contains a 5 digit number that is assigned to the litter at birth. All pups in a particular litter will have the same number.

 

The RIGHT ear contains either a 2 or 3 digit number followed by a letter. The numbers represent the month and year the hound was born in. The first 1 or 2 numbers identify the month and the last number identifies the year. The letter signifies the order in which they were tattooed.

Examples:

110C - 11=Nov, 0=2000, C= 3rd pup tattooed

42A - 4=April, 2=2002, A=1st pup tattooed

 

 

Now that the tattoos have some meaning we can find out their racing name in one of two ways.

 

First, the most definitive way of finding out your hounds racing name is to call the National Greyhound Association (NGA) at 785-263-4660 with the tattoo numbers and they can look up your hounds info in a matter of minutes. The NGA is open weekdays from 7-5 CST. When you call just tell them you are looking for the racing name of a hound and they will ask you for the tattoo numbers. They can even work with partial tattoo numbers if they are not 100% clear.

 

The second way is to use the web site Greyhound-Data ( http://greyhound-data.com ) to search for their information.

 

Using this link: http://greyhound-data.com/earmark.htm (or by choosing Tattoo off the menu from the main web site) a search page will appear giving you search options; right ear, left ear, gender, color, birth year, land. The database usually only contains LEFT EAR tattoo data for US hounds so that is the only tattoo criteria that should be used when searching. You may try limiting the results by gender, color, birth year or land but to yield the the most results just use the LEFT EAR number.

 

You should be presented with all the hounds matching that tattoo number. In many cases this will be the whole litter but the database isn't always 100% complete. Sometimes two litters will be displayed, but with different birth years so look out for that.

 

Now if you know part of their racing name or if your hound is a unique color in the litter (like the only white hound in a litter of brindles) you can easily figure out which hound is yours. But if there are multiple options you will still have to call the NGA as described above to get accurate information.

 

Once you have the hounds racing name you can use these various methods to find your hounds heritage and racing history.

 

1. Check Greyhound-Data for their pedigree and race information. Greyhound-Data doesn't always have all of the race information but it's at least a good place to start.

 

2. Sign up and register at Rosnet ( http://rosnet2000.com ). At Rosnet you can also find race results (only for certain tracks, may be more or less than what Greyhound-Data has) and if you are lucky race replays from certain tracks. Rosnet is no longer a free site. You may try TrackInfo.com but the race results on there are not very comprehensive since they are for dogs active at the time the service began.

 

3. Do a simple Google search. Enter in the racing name of your greyhound within quotes followed by the word greyhound after it. (For example: "One Fast Doggie" greyhound) You will be surprised what might come up. Many tracks don't report their results to Rosnet but instead use Trackinfo ( http://trackinfo.com ). A Google search will usually turn up those results (and usually only if the dog placed 1, 2 or 3). Many times the links are old and broken and the pages are not able to be retrieved any more but you are able to view Googles cache by clicking the Cached link at the end of the summary.

 

4. If you know the track they raced at you can always check the tracks website, sometimes they keep historic info available. This is not always the case as track web sites can vary greatly.

 

5. The last source you can use is Greybase. Greybase has all the race results for all tracks and even more detailed information like owners, trainers and kennels. There is a $15 fee for the detailed information but it's well worth it if you want to know everything about your couch potato. To request info send an email to support@greybase.com.

Edited December 1, 2007 by snowjay