Home is wherever she runs

Marianne Rose makes herself at home wherever she goes. A winner this year at Emerald Downs, Hastings Park, and Fairplex, she has traveled to Zia Park in search of her third straight stakes win Sunday in the $60,000 Permian Basin.

The six-furlong race is for 2-year-old fillies, and the field of seven also includes Lunarlady, the winner of the $40,000 Prairie Meadows Debutante, and Sis Got Game, a winner at Retama Park of her last two starts. Lunarlady was cross-entered in a stakes Friday night at Remington Park.

Marianne Rose arrived at Zia in the early morning hours on Thursday, having shipped over from Turf Paradise, where she worked five furlongs in a bullet 58.60 seconds on Oct. 11. She has settled in well, said her trainer, Richard Wright, and despite Marianne Rose having won at three tracks in five career starts, he is taking nothing for granted heading into the Permian Basin.

"It's never easy when you're shipping in on somebody else's territory and it's a different racetrack and that," he said. "There's some nice fillies in the race, and I'm going to have to outrun them if I win the race."

Wright has been pleased with the progression Marianne Rose has made since a more than eight-length wire-to-wire maiden score in her debut at Emerald Downs on July 8. In her last two starts she has shown a new dimension, using stalking tactics to win the $51,000 Lassie at Hastings two starts ago on Aug. 26 and the $63,000 Bustles and Bows at Fairplex Sept. 14.

"She's really, really a tryer, and since she started to relax and that, we've been able to bring her from off the pace, and its made a better filly out of her," said Wright.

Wright said the timing of the Permian Basin is the reason Marianne Rose shipped in for the race. It gives her about five weeks since her last start, at Fairplex.

"We're just going race by race," said Wright. "She's a nice filly. We've got a lot of hopes for her."

Glen Corbett has the mount on Marianne Rose, who races for John and Marianne Becker. The filly is by More Than Ready, and her dam, Music Fever, is a half-sister to Grade 2 winner Let.

* Zia is staging an exhibition match race on Sunday between a dachshund, or wiener dog, and a chihuahua. The participants were to be determined during a series of dog races for their breeds at the track Saturday.