The Last Straw/Frank McNally: I'm not a woman, obviously. But I empathised with Jeananne Crowley's letter to this paper on Thursday, in which she described spending last Saturday evening "on the sofa with a bottle of wine and a Maltese terrier reading Almost There, which is all about an Irishwoman on a sofa reading with only a bottle of wine and a dog for company".
Her letter concluded: "Should I start a support group?"
By a poignant coincidence, I too spent Saturday evening in the company of a bottle of wine and a dog. In fact, in the case of the dog - the greyhound in which I'm a shareholder - "company" would be a bit of an overstatement. And far from the comfort of a sofa, I spent most of the evening in a cramped mini-bus travelling to and from Waterford, where the dog was performing. "Performing" would be a bit of an overstatement too.
At least with a Maltese terrier, you can have a two-way relationship. Despite owning more than six per cent of him, I have never even met my dog, who lives with his trainer in Tipperary. As readers of this column will know, greyhounds rank second only to scratch-cards as sound financial investments. But as an emotional investment, the end-of-year return on a syndicate dog is zero, before tax. The best you can hope for is fleeting eye contact during the pre-race parade, but if you went up to the greyhound and introduced yourself as his owner, he'd probably call for security.
Even his public appearances can be hard to follow. The professional racing hound spends a lot of time on the road, in an elliptical orbit of tracks including Thurles, Cork, Newbridge, and occasionally Dublin. Unfortunately, there tends to be a time-lag in communications (I'm not criticising any syndicate officers here, but dispatches from the Crimean War were more contemporaneous) which means you sometimes only hear of his Dublin appearances afterwards. He won at Shelbourne Park recently, but nobody even knew he was running. All we have to show for it is the prize money, which - thankfully - was enough to keep him in food and veterinary supplies for over a week.
Nevertheless, word reached us in advance that he had somehow qualified for the final of the prestigious Value Centre Cash & Carry Stakes in Waterford - first prize €2,500 plus a trophy. Here at last was a chance for the dog to open up a significant lead over his maintenance bills. But even more importantly, a stakes victory would allow us to pose with him for photographs, and perhaps even establish a rapport.
Thus, several of his more enthusiastic supporters hired a bus for the night and - pushing the boat out - booked dinner in the plush surrounds of Kilcohan Park's restaurant, overlooking the track. This is the modern greyhound-racing experience: a three-course meal, a nice bottle of wine, pleasant betting assistants coming to your table and taking away your money.
Greyhound racing is now unrecognisable from my earliest experiences of it, in the mid-1970s. If you asked for a bottle of wine at a dog track back then, they'd look at you funny and ask: "What age are you?" The part that hasn't changed, however, is that the average race still lasts 29.5 seconds, if you're lucky. If you're not lucky, your dog will encounter trouble at the first bend and the race will be effectively over 24 seconds earlier than scheduled. This is what happened on Saturday. Admittedly, it was more exciting for me because, in the confusion, I mistook our greyhound for the one that was in second-place down the back straight. But the entertainment value of the mistake was offset at the end by the twin disappointments of learning that (a) he had actually finished fifth and (b) I need new glasses.
We held our AGM on site, voting to increase the monthly subscription, a decision clearly influenced by wine. Then we made the return journey to Dublin, poorer, no wiser, and still not having met the dog. In retrospect, there had been a bad omen on the way down to Waterford, when the bus encountered trouble at a bend and braked sharply, causing a large syndicate member - who was on his feet at the time - to collide with my bad knee.
Luckily there were no incidents on the way back. Some people played poker, but not being able to play poker, I sat on my own and read until I fell asleep. And all I can say to Jeananne is that, having shared a small bus with one for several hours, the therapeutic value of support groups is overrated.