It is not often that we deliver you a dog. By way of explanation, we could start with the fact that not often do we come across one that breakfasts on sardines on toast, uses Colgate to have his teeth brushed or goes to sleep at night listening to Neil Diamond.

The particular tastes of Barnfield On Air have reaped him a slither of publicity, though perhaps at this stage in his career it is not so significant whether he sleeps better to Song Sung Blue or Forever In Blue Jeans but whether he can cap the drama in his life by establishing himself as one of the greatest greyhounds of all time.

His owners and trainers are firmly of the belief that the two are inextricably tied, that were it not for sardines and Colgate, he would not be the fastest greyhound that many a trained eye has seen. But speed alone guarantees that Barnfield On Air may be remembered only as a seriously quick flash in the pan, or an unfulfilled talent. Winning the Blue Square Greyhound Derby, a month-long six-round event in which he starts today, though, will crown him the canine Red Rum.

For now, his owner, Sam Poots, agrees that Barnfield On Air is stuck on Colin Montgomerie status: no one doubts his splendid talent and he has set a truck-load of records, but he has never won a major. Yet unlike Monty, this quirkiest of greyhounds cannot simply go through the seasons hoping that his day will come. The English Derby is the biggest event of the year, but at 3 years old, the fear is that Barnfield On Air is already over the hill. He is going out to stud next year anyway (at this stage, the Montgomerie analogy ceases to work), so this is his last chance. How Poots and his team yearn for their dog to exhibit again the talent he showed last year, when, in five astonishing months, he won 14 of his 16 races and set all-time records on four different tracks. Barnfield On Air is not a “natural trapper” (quick out of the blocks) and at Manchester's Belle Vue Stadium last October, he fell out of his trap, but still broke the track record. The next week he went back and did it again.

“Even if he doesn't win the Derby,” Poots said fatefully, “I'll still think he's one of the greatest-ever dogs.” One that has transformed his life, too.

Poots had owned dogs for a number of years before the success of his recruitment agency allowed him to indulge his obsession and move the family home into a property outside Billericay, Essex, where a set of stables was flattened to make way for a nine-kennel greyhound training facility. To run as a business, most greyhound kennels have to keep 60-plus dogs; Poots's attitude was to embrace a six-figure annual loss and bathe his nine athletes in an elite environment unlike almost any other.

Barnfield On Air got there having been advertised for sale in the Racing Post for a week at £14,000 without a glimmer of interest. Poots bought him without even seeing him, but after first watching him race, in Newbridge,

Co Kildare, Poots rang his three co-owners and informed them that they had something very special. He also started receiving offers of £100,000 for the dog, but knew that his new home had the perfect guest.

When Barnfield On Air moved from Ireland to Billericay, though, he was an anxious personality and would wet himself. Poots would sit for hours talking to him; occasionally he would take him up to his own house.

On the track, meanwhile, Barnfield On Air showed the occasional glimmer of genius, but Poots's feeling that he was not fulfilling his talent triggered, a year ago, the hiring of Darren Keefe as his dogs' trainer.

Keefe is a 28-year-old history and politics student who has been around greyhounds most of his life. He is largely responsible for the dogs' privileged environment. Many greyhounds get only one meal a day, and if they are lucky enough to get breakfast, it will be cereal. But Keefe believes in giving his dogs meals that he would only eat himself, he believes in brown bread rather than white at breakfast, in brushing the dogs' teeth, in massaging them every day and in working them out on the treadmill when they are coming back from injury.

One of the few details that Keefe has yet to nail down is what music they prefer to go to bed to. The dogs' music system has Barry White and Snow Patrol as well as the two CDs of Neil Diamond.

“A happy dog will run for you,” is Keefe's philosophy, in which case Barnfield On Air is generally overjoyed. He is certainly not the nervous personality of old. “He knows he's No1,” Poots said. “When we bring a new dog in, you can see his arrogance - he likes to tell them who he is.”

All agree that a combination of love, affection, Colgate and sardines is responsible. And all are thus desperate that this magic formula can work one crucial last time.

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