She’s Whistling shoots for five straight in Young Guns

By Isaac Murphy

Garry Gilbert earns his living helping athletes perform to the best of their ability at his Sports Therapy Clinic and the part-time trainer has recently found the remedy for She’s Whistling.

Gilbert  has turned the promising bitch’s career around up the Capalaba straight, and coming off a Jeffrey Jones Fifth Grade Final win she looms large over this weekend’s Young Guns Heats.

Gilbert has been training for over thirty years in Queensland and knew the late Jeffrey Jones as a champion of the industry.

The founding father of the Queensland Greyhound Breeders Owners and Trainers Association Jones was a trail blazer for the sport and Gilbert was humbled to win a race named in his honour.

“It’s fantastic to win a final, but I was really taken by the fact it was named after a bloke who was a titan of the sport - it meant a lot,” Gilbert said.

She’s Whistling had to do it the hard way in her heat and final, with box draws completely against her racing pattern.

“Right from her very first trials she’s been dynamite out of the boxes, and she needed to be with that tendency to crash to the fence up the straight,” Gilbert said.

“To do it from box seven in the final and box eight in the heat was some kind of effort.

“You see most of the greyhounds up there want to get to the outside but she’s the opposite, I’d love to see her draw box two or three and run a nice straight line.”

Getting She’s Whistling to run a straight line has been the least of Gilbert’s issues, it’s when she has to go around the turns the trouble starts.

“She’s always shown a lot of ability and was going quick up the straight but whenever we tried her around the corners, she just wasn’t handling it,” he said.

“We couldn’t figure out what was going on and finally got the diagnosis she had fractures in her back foot and so we had to give her about five months off.

“We’ve had a couple of looks at the circle since then, but at this stage when she’s going as well as she is, we’ve decided to keep her up the straight, mature up even more and win some races.”

She’s Whistling is on a streak of four wins at Capalaba and gets a great opportunity to make it five in Sunday’s Young Guns heats.

“As it turns out, her timing for this Sunday’s Young Guns heats has been spot on, she’s really hitting her straps at the right time,” Gilbert said.

“She’s pulled up brilliantly and the form has been franked, John Catton’s dog Jasper The Jet who we beat up the straight the last two weeks, went 29.75 at Albion Park.

“They’re going to be tough heats, you only have to look at the Capalaba Cup heats to know that, but her form is the best it’s ever been and if she can draw a box or find a way to run 19.72 again she’ll be in with a big show.”

While Capalaba might have been the making of She’s Whistling, Gilbert still holds aspirations of getting her around the circle, something he’ll shift his focus to after the Young Guns.

“After the Young Guns I’m hoping she’s going to be ready to get back on the circle, she started this prep there where she finished just a length behind Waddling Witch after leading up,” he said.

“She’s been at Capalaba since then except for one run over the 331 metres just to see how she handled it, but unfortunately the four-dog crashed all over her early, so we didn’t get a true indication of where she was at.

“She’ll be a very quick 520-metre bitch if she can sort the corners out, when we first trialled her at seventeen months she went 5.48 to the first mark - she just has to put it all together.”

Gilbert just has the two dogs in work now and they’re both owned by long-time friend Gary Dodt, and the pair have found a trusted line to breed with.

“I trained a dog for my owner Gary Dodt called Turn and Burn and he was a good 520-metre dog at Albion Park, and She’s Whistling is out of Turn and Burn’s sister Isla’s Style,” Gilbert said.

“Brent Kline owned Isla’s Style and bred the Fabregas litter and given the previous success with the bloodlines, Gary bought She’s Whistling and brought her to me.

“They’re just a breed that knows how to win races and when you find one of those, you keep going with it.

“When She’s Whistling is done, I’m sure she’ll be a valuable brood bitch too.”

While Gilbert’s name goes in the book as the trainer, said he couldn’t do what he does without the help of Dodt and his daughter Ciara, their original friendship forged through business.

“The last couple of years I’ve just trained for Gary and his daughter Ciara who help me out a lot, I can’t drive the lure and put them in the boxes all at once - it’s a team effort,” Gilbert said.

“I met Gary through my sports therapy business as a client, he used to talk a lot about how he was into race horses and I said ‘mate you should have a go at the dogs, they’re much cheaper’ and that’s how it started for us.

“I gave him a bitch Felicity Trick who he started with and bred a litter, and he’s been hooked from then on.”

Gilbert has been running his business for almost three decades, a lot of his professional work benefitting his training too.

“The last twenty-seven years I’ve had my sports therapy clinic and managed to juggle it with my greyhound commitments,” he said.

“There’s a lot of things that cross over, I do a lot of work on people with my hands and do plenty of remedial work on the dogs with my hands too - a lot of stretching and massage, it’s a good mix.”