I've been away in the USA for a while; now to continue...

Well that’s all you need on the graph. If you have a real forensic ‘bent’ I suppose you could look at the traps that a dog ran well from (it is on the race card in the column after the distance of previous races) and make up your mind about whether you think it is in its best trap. I rarely consider that aspect; but I know that the professionals in the sport place a lot of emphasis on it, as well as the weight of a dog, the breeding, the stamina, the suppression of the season of a bitch and many more things that I as a punter do not know much about. The weight of a dog is used by many serious punters to decide if a dog should be bet. They compare its weight with the kilos it weighed when it won a previous race; if it doesn’t vary too much it might be worth betting to win again. The weights sheet for the race meeting can be obtained at the Racing Manager’s Office at most tracks.
Some tracks put on hurdle races and handicap races which add to the variety of racing, which is welcomed. I have never made a graph for a hurdle race but if I were to do so I’d tackle it in the same way as the above illustrations provided that all the dogs in it had run predominately over the same distance in their last few races.

Come racing!!