IN more than 15 years of training greyhounds, Steven Baker has never claimed a winning treble until his effort at Wauchope on Saturday night.
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Baker completed the hat-trick with Diamond Delaney, Chase Delaney and Space Delaney at a meeting that was put back to a 7.30pm start following Saturday’s warm weather.
“The little bitch (Diamond Delaney) has had three starts for a fifth, a second and now a win,” he said.
“Chase has had four or five starts for three wins now and Space has had four or five starts for three wins as well too.”
While Chase and Space Delaney overcame the "squeeze boxes” to leave the rest of the field in their wake, Diamond did it a little tougher.
“The little bitch had to come from last, but she had a good box draw – drew one which was a good,” Baker said.
“The other two got out of the boxes within 50 yards and left them for dead.
“They were in box three and four which wasn’t so good because they had the squeeze box, but they were too strong for the opposition on the night.”
Baker said the ease of the wins didn’t surprise him.
He knows he’s got a good litter.
“I bred them from little puppies and have had them since they were half an hour old when I got them out of the vets,” he said.
“It’s been a pretty successful litter and I really enjoy it.”
Not only was it a history-making meeting for Baker, the home-track success made it even sweeter.
“The dogs love it out there; it’s the best grass track in the state,” he said.
“And to do a treble is something that is very hard to come by these days. I’ve had quite a few doubles, but it’s the first time in my career I’ve had the three winners in the one meeting.”
Baker said the secret to his dog’s success could be attributed to the way he brought them up.
“If you want to get something out of it, you’ve got to put something into it,” he said.
“A lot of people breed dogs and they never get a winner out of them because they throw them in a little backyard somewhere, let them grow up and pull them out and expect them to win races for them.”
“My dogs have lived in 90 metre runs since they were six weeks old and they still do. I don’t lock my dogs up. They never get locked in the kennel, all got an open door to a 90-metre run.”
He said he now wanted to test them over longer distances at metropolitan tracks.
“I want to take them down to the TAB tracks now and start racing at places like Maitland and Sydney.
“We’ll get them running over a bit more distance which will take two or three weeks.”