Dog Races

This seems to be a season of changes.  One of my favorite day trips from the park is to the dog races in Tampa and that's where a bus load of us went yesterday.  Surprisingly, the trip in January was cancelled because not enough people signed up to go.  Just a few years ago, if you didn't get your name on the list within a day of it being posted, you didn't have much chance of getting on it at all.  Yesterday our bus wasn't even full.

Carol and I sat together and she, for the first time, left her dog, Maya, with a sitter.  Maya is a rescue dog who was probably used for breeding in a puppy mill so she's very traumatized and quite dependent on Carol's presence.  She wails when Carol leaves her alone and that's why she decided to use a sitter.

On these trips we first stop at Buddy Freddies for a darned good breakfast buffet.  The food was excellent but the place was maybe half full...it's usually full.  Then off to the races where we spent about half an hour going over the program to decide which dogs to bet on.  My practice is to bet on all 10 races (we can only stay for 10) at the same time, having chosen my dogs because of the name, and a bit of their records.  I know so little about how to bet that it doesn't matter whether I bet all at once or one race at a time.  Now, Carol chose to see her dog arrive before choosing one of them to bet on and she won a lot of races!  I won about $17 back from the $20 I bet and that's not bad, either.

Another big change was that the attendance at the race track was very small.  There are usually triple the number of people who were there yesterday.  Hmm!

After the races, we got back on the bus and went to Parksdale for our strawberries and ice cream desserts.  Soooo good!  There is also a farm market there for us to shop before we leave.  No change there...it was packed with people!

By the time we got back home, I was just too tired to go over to the clubhouse and play cards so I stayed home and snoozed away the evening.  I was in bed and fast asleep before 10 P.M.

All in all, it was a fun day as always and I'm looking forward to going again!