By Elinor Tinsley
One of the events that has become famous, or infamous, depending on which side of the event you’re on, is the Wiener Dog Races at the Texas Crab Festival in Crystal Beach. For the past umpteenth years (wasn’t able to determine the first one), each Saturday morning of the Crab Festival (depending on the severity of the weather), at around 11:00 AM, you will seen a parade of these delightful creatures, introduced by none other than our local Larry Flanagan, and his lovely assistant Brenda Flanagan, prancing around the race course before beginning the serious business of the races. This year was no exception, but it was the first year that Bay Vue Methodist Church at 1411 Hwy 87, had agreed to begin orchestrating the event, and we do mean orchestration, because you might not have any idea how much behind the scenes work to be done before we can actually present you with this event.
The Island Church in Galveston, TX, with the wonderful leadership of Laura Rojas and her large crew of volunteers, has been coming across the ferry for the last seven years putting on a well organized race. We want to thank their church for all the hard work and headaches in traveling across the pond all these years. When Laura approached Tom Osten about three months ago, letting him know that their church would no longer be able to run the races, Tom approached Bay View Methodist Church about taking over the job. As the president of the Bay Vue Methodist Women, I immediately said we would not be able to do it unless Sherry Morgan, who has been involved in the Wiener Dog Races since their inception, was on board with it. She said yes, so we were in! Laura was kind enough to come and head our training session and Tom Osten presented her church with a donation check for all of their hard work and the supplies that they donated to the Crab Festival for the event.
With an initial 72 dogs being registered, the owners then needed to provide updated shot records, proof of breed to keep the race true and fair and a current photo of the dog so no imposters. The list began dwindling down for one reason or another, and the night before the race we had 43 dogs that were fully registered and ready to go. On race morning we had 36 dogs check in to race, with a couple barely making the 10:40 SHARP deadline. You don’t know how many heats you are running until you know how many dogs are racing. With six initial heats, four semifinal heats, and the championship races, we got to see lots of wiener dog action. You could tell that this wasn’t the first race for many of the dogs, but for some it was pretty obvious that it was. We had two video cameras at the finish lines recording the finish of each race and never had to review the videos until the championship race, and were so glad we had it. The judges did not all agree on first and second place until the videos were reviewed and we had a clear winner…by a nose…
First place ($200) went to Rocko with his human, Raquel Carmona from Pasadena, TX. Second place ($100) went to Paco and his human, Sandra Lundy from Baytown, TX. Paco had been the first place winner for the past two years, but hopefully he was not heartbroken about a second place win. Our third place ($50) went to Mallie, our only girl winner, with her human, Madison Padgett. We thank all the participants for entering, some coming from far away, and hope you had a great time and are going to enter your pups again next year.
We would like to thank the sponsor for this event, Seacoast Surveyors and our MC, Larry Flanagan and his lovely assistant and wife, Brenda Flanagan, for doing a fabulous job once again, all the hard workers from the Crab Festival Charities that helped set up and tear down the event and all of the wonderful cheering spectators that made this event a success and so much fun to watch. Bay Vue will work out any kinks that might have distracted from the event so that it will go even smoother next year.
And speaking of Bay Vue, we would like to thank our volunteers Denise Boyd, Linda and Ron Chesser, Sandi Covington, Billie Dempsey, Karla and Brent Doolittle, Linda Elissalde, Don Evans, Fran Griffin, Bunny Meyer, Bob Morgan, Sherry Morgan, Raquel Silverberg, and Elinor and Pat Tinsley. In addition to these volunteers, we have some of the Lazy Ladies Aerobics class and a few spouses, Marie and Jeff Butler, Queen Galbreath, Amy and Harvey Lail, Diane Lewis and Mary Kay Morrison. We could not have pulled this off without all the wonderful volunteers that we had. We hope you are willing to help again next year and long live the Texas Crab Festival Wiener Dog Races.
