We have cub reporter Allison Gegan to thank for this story!
Janine DeFao, Chronicle Staff Writer
Sunday, May 13, 2007
In the end, it was Clarabelle by a nose.
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This being a Chihuahua nose, it was a close race in the regional finals of the search for America's fastest Chihuahua Saturday in a San Bruno mall parking lot. .
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The Boulder Creek ankle-biter tore 35 feet down the fake turf to the finish line -- where her owner, Kristel Krepelka, was enticing her with a plastic container of turkey hot dogs -- in a mere 2.69 seconds.
But very few of the preliminary heats required a photo finish. When the gates opened, most of the nearly 250 pint-size competitors ran in circles, veered off course, stopped to sniff each other or even take a potty break in the middle of the track. Seabiscuit must have been rolling in his grave.
The famed thoroughbred used to race on the same spot, now the site of The Shops at Tanforan, and his statue graces the parking lot. With a grand prize of a free trip to San Diego in September to compete against 14 other regional champs, some Chihuahua owners spent months training their racers, using shoe boxes as starting gates and running them down hallways to reward treats.
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Saturday, there was some human elbowing at
the starting gates and at least one disputed judge's call, but few of the hundreds in attendance seemed particularly intense about the third annual PETCO Unleashed Races. Then again, it's hard to take seriously a legion of diminutive yappers with names like Precious, Baby, Chico, Peanut and Napoleon dressed in tutus, sweaters, fur-trimmed jackets, necklaces and sunglasses, and tucked inside their owners' jackets, purses and strollers.
"You get a particular type of crowd," said Kathleen Sanders of San Francisco, whose Minerva was decked out in a red dress with flames licking the sides. Asked what type, she elaborated: "Insane." Sanders spent the week convincing her co-workers to lift a mail bin off her pup so she could race the halls of their video game company.
Sherryl Lavin of Castro Valley entered her 2-year-old Bobby for the second time, but kept his sister Maggie, dressed in a Tinker Bell T-shirt, on the sidelines. "She's not real bright. We call her the cheerleader," said Lavin, as she pulled the pair in what looked like a wheeled suitcase.
"The poor dogs," said Cupertino resident Bonnie Helton, whose 5-month-old pup, Ellie, failed to cross the finish line. "This is all about the humans."
E-mail Janine DeFao at jdefao@sfchronicle.com.
This article appeared on page B - 1 of the San Francisco Chronicle
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