This morning I received a very thoughtful email from RQ. It reads... "Congratulations! What a thrill to win at Ipswich with Click Cowan in Pathways Novice/Class 3/431 Race 2 on 8th June 2018." Race replay Click the image below to watch the replay on the Racing Queensland website. It then displays the results with my boy's name next to a beautiful Gold Cup and the other placings. "We wish you the best of luck at the next race meeting. Thank you for supporting racing in Queensland." Well, well done, RQ!!! What a lovely touch. Made me feel all warm inside. Sincerely, a very nice gesture indeed. Anyway, it seems that RQ are now at least trying to encourage somewhat. The PROMOTION side of things is still a little bit quiet though. Hopefully they can get that bulldozing ahead with their promotions manager. All jolly good. We still have a smidgen of a problem with breeding numbers, so I hope they extend the breeding incentives beyond next year...it will need to be to have any hope at all. Gap, as I understand it, have problems with a shortage of intakes, which is not good, because at the end of the year their adoption numbers will look TERRIBLE and we will have all sorts of antis raving and ranting (and rightly so) that the industry is not doing anywhere near enough to rehome the dogs. We can't blame that on the downturn in breeding numbers just yet because that has not hit the retiring group. In fact, you you would think the numbers of retirees have INCREASED because of all the fighting and failing to pursue...you can only guess why that is. The poor old grading department is having a shocker of a time trying to come up with ideas to improve the lack of nominations. What a nightmare job they must have ATM. They do a wonderful job in there but there is only so much one can do with reducing numbers, and boy, aren't they reducing fast! Yes indeed, it's no Picaso, is it. After receiving that rather warm email this morning, I thought... "Gee, perhaps this mob aren't that bad at all and they are trying to get us back on track!" They can't be any worse than the last mob under Libs who failed to re-instate our rightful ownership of Albion Park! The ones who raped and pillaged our prize money and appearance money to the tune of well over $10,000,000 and counting! The ones who promised $1,000,000 to GAP after the TAB agreement and just disappeared into thin air! Surely not! So, I got to thinking, as I do, and came up with a brilliant idea! The current RQ have recently given a prize money increase to the industry. The problem with that is the amount we race for now is still well short of the money we raced for 3 years ago before we were financially sexually assaulted by the other crew. The increase had to be at least DOUBLE what it was, and closer to TREBLE to get us back to where we were 3 YEARS AGO!!! Even with that result, because of inflation, we would have been STILL BEHIND, RQ!!!!! So, because the Greyhound folk are a forgiving bunch, I reckon if you raise the prize money BACK TO WHERE IT WAS 3 years ago, (or plus a wee bit more to consider inflation) keep the breeding incentives going to well after the new year, the next breeding season might just escalate to heights the numbers need to be to sustain the industry. There are at least 2 years of pain to endure before we can get back to a realistic medium IF you act NOW!!! Between now and then, if you follow my suggestion many more dogs will come here to race for the money...more Broods will migrate here because of the incentives, and YOUR GRADING DEPT CAN SLEEP BETTER knowing the road to recovery is finally being laid. Don't have the money to do that? Yes you do, because those rascally wabbits before you kind bunch took the money and it went to....? All you have to do is follow the money trail and find out where it landed and give it back to its rightful owners...GREYHOUNDS. I have faith in this current RQ and I'm sure they'll do the right thing. Yes Siree, I do. Good onya, RQ, keep up the good work.
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