JOCKEY Frankie Dettori looks unlikely to win the 2.30pm at Newbury with his new mount - a champion Newfoundland dog with the same name.

After being made a champion by winning best of breed at three top shows this year, owner Jan Ballinger decided it was time for Frankie the dog to meet his famous namesake.

Frankie the dog was a few weeks old before his breeder Delia Sarson, from Malvern, had found a name for him.

She backed a horse at a race meeting and the winning jockey provided her with a moniker.

"He's got a cute, cheeky face like him too," said Mrs Ballinger, from Alton Park in Callow End.

As a pup, the Newfoundland impressed judges, and at the age of 14 months he had already obtained his junior warrant and stud book from Championship and Open shows, qualifying him for Crufts for life.

But Mrs Ballinger's dream was for Frankie to be named a champion - meaning he would have to win three championship competitions.

"I would often say to Frankie, 'when you're a champion I'll tell the real Frankie Dettori all about you and I'll ask if he'd like to met you'."

True to her word, Mrs Ballinger contacted the jockey's agent after the dog, who is almost three years old, earned his championship title at the Windsor dog show on Saturday, July 5.

Frankie finally met Frankie at Newbury races last week and the pair were taken with each other, said Mrs Ballinger.

"The real Frankie Dettori took one look at Newfoundland Frankie and gasped," she said.

"The look on his face was a picture."

Posing for photos, Frankie even pretended to sit on his canine counterpart's back.

Frankie the dog may not be as big as Frankie Dettori's normal mounts, but at 11 stone, the massive mutt still weighs two-and-a-half stone more than the featherweight horseman.

In fact, he's too big to fit on Mrs Ballinger's scales - so she takes him to where she works, at Joy Mining Machinery on Bromyard Road, Worcester, and puts him on the weighbridge normally used for lorries!