Savannah Wiener Dog Races

Picture this: 150 dachshunds running around downtown Savannah, GA

In your mind's eye, I'm sure you can picture the chaos. But I lived the reality. This past weekend, the annual Wiener Dog Race was held for Oktoberfest in downtown Savannah. I entered the boys for fun. To say that I did it. To check it off my "bucket" list. But to be honest, it was quite overwhelming for both me and the boys! They aren't used to being out and about too much and there were so many people and so many other dogs. But the good news is that most everyone were doxie owners, so they know their temperament and didn't get offended when Brutus or JR went postal on them or their dog. They were slightly stressed to say the least. But I tried my best to keep them in "competition mode" (haha!).

We had to be downtown at 8:30 to register for the 10:00 am race. So we had plenty of time to sit by the river and get some good people and dachshund  watching in. I can honestly say, I have now seen every shape, size, and color of dachshunds there are.

Headed downtown and to get their run on

The dog track

After what seemed an eternity of me worrying about my dogs biting random little kids and dreaming of the impending lawsuits that would in turn follow, it was finally time to run in their heat.

Runners 30 & 31

My main man/dog wrangler getting ready

In the shoot they go!

David may have given them a little push out the gate :-)

And they are off! Look at my boys go. JR is in the purple bandanna and Brutus is in the light blue one.

Photo Courtesy of The Savannah Morning News

Across the finish line they go! And straight to the lady next to me with the treat bag, Go figure!

And how did they do??? Well, my predictions were correct. JR CAME IN 1ST and Brutus was a close second!! 

I am so proud of them!! Because JR won his heat, that meant we had to stick around until the finals. And this is where JR got robbed. There were 150 dogs entered and there were 15 heats and only 10 can run for the trophy and guess what?  His time wasn't fast enough to qualify for the final championship run, so he didn't get to run again. I was so disappointed! I knew that if he would have ran, he totally would have won. He is still the champion in my heart.

All in all, it was a fun experience and I may do it again next year- but with only one dog to chase around and not two. 

As you can see, the ride home was much different that then ride there! I had two tired little pups that raced their hearts out.