Saturday, June 18, 2005

Remembering a champion

We met with Bruce and Kathy Rice of Vista today. They are the proud owners of Blitzen, and of the late champion Pretzel, who died suddenly of an immune disorder last December, just weeks before the Wiener Nationals.

The Rice's are obviously still hurting, and they gave us an emotional interview recounting Pretzel's racing career. We got to see all the many awards he won, as well as many pictures of him with other celebrities.

Pretzel's little brother Blitzen is being prepped to take his place, and if his morning time split is any indication, he's a real threat to win this year. I have no doubt he'll make it to the final selection this fall in San Diego.

Pretzel's rivalry with Noodles was one of the wiener racing world's more famous rivalries. Maybe we'll soon be hearing about the Noodles Blitzen Blowout...

Tuesday, June 14, 2005

Orlando and Eddie Haskell

We did two fun interviews today.

The first was with Orlando Gutierrez of the Los Alamitos Raceway. Orlando runs the largest wiener dog race in America - average crowds of 10,500 pack his place every year as 64 dogs race for 2 spots at the national championships.

Orlando spoke to us about some of the champions that have made their mark at Los Al - Noodles, Pretzel, and Baron. Baron was his (and our) pick as the most dominant wiener dog to race in the west.

Next we headed down the road to meet up with actor Ken Osmond, who played Eddie Haskell in the old "Leave it to Beaver" show. Ken's dog Indiana Jones runs at Los Al, although last year he didn't do so well (he ran back into the starting gate). This year things might be different. Indiana runs like greased lightning, and he seems to have gotten over his fears. If I was a betting man I'd put money on Indiana making the final cut this summer...