From The Greyhound Track To Where?

[Brindlebabe]

Greyhound tracks are closing and the industry isn't doing enough to care for the thousands of dogs who face uncertain fate

 

Michele Hanson guardian.co.uk, Wednesday 17 March 2010 13.59 GMT Article history

Greyhound racing is in decline. Photograph: Linda Nylind

 

Portsmouth greyhound track may soon be closing down. The owner denies it, and says he in negotiations, but dog racing is in decline. Walthamstow and Reading stadiums have recently closed, and if Portsmouth goes too, 220 greyhounds will be in trouble and need rescuing. That's on top of the other 10,000 a year that are unfit to race – too old, injured or not up to scratch – and so thrown on the scrapheap.

 

Owners and trainers are meant to pay £200 for the care of each retired dog, but they're not always keen to do that, even though the industry is making squillions (bookmakers make about £2.34bn gross annual profit), and may try a cheaper disposal method. A couple of years ago, a rather unsavoury fellow in Durham had shot thousands of greyhounds in the head for £10 a pop, for licensed trainers, but he was an exception. We hope.

 

People working in the industry say that the dogs are happy, don't need much of a walkie, take no drugs, are well fed and looked after because they need to be healthy to race. There are good and bad owners and trainers, but as soon as you put humans, animals and money into an equation, you're going to have problems, and it's difficult to warm to an industry that dumps 10,000 dogs a year.

 

Campaigners for greyhound welfare suggest that the dogs are not happy cooped up in a smallish pen with another dog, and are busting to run by the time they race. They're stuffed with drugs and thrown away when their short racing life is over, aged between three and five years old. On top of that, about 15,000 puppies seem to disappear annually, because they weren't much good at racing and never even made the race track.

 

The lucky ones get to a regulated track (the industry regulates itself), which has its own attached re-homing centre, some good, some not. Unregulated "flapping" tracks are usually grimmer – more crowded, worse conditions, and the redundant dogs are off in a lorry to God knows where. Horrible stories abound. One independent rescue centre in the north of England has a wall of shame, listing the situations and conditions in which the hundreds of abandoned dogs were found. When I was a child in the 50s, half an Alsatian was found in the freezer of a local restaurant. Uproar. The story hit the local headlines. That was half a dog. Now we have tens of thousands of dogs disappearing and hardly anyone bats an eyelid.

 

Perhaps we don't want to think about it. You need a strong stomach and a will of iron to plunge into the world of greyhound rescue. The website pictures of dead and injured dogs stick in your head, along with the knowledge that people really are that cruel and greedy. Greyhound owners can be identified by tattoos in the dogs' ears. But ears can be, and are, cut off.

 

In Spain, the greyhound (galgo) problem is even more harrowing and massive. Galgos are used to hunt hares; they're for chasing, not racing. They're often poorly fed and kept in hovels. The season lasts from September to February and dogs are usually kept for only one season. Too stingy to keep them until the next one, the owners get rid of them in various grisly ways: hanging them from trees, throwing them down wells, mutilating and abandoning them – about 50,000 annually, so life for our greyhounds is a comparative breeze.

 

Luckily our refuges find homes for a few rescued galgos, and for about 5,000 of our own 10,000 surplus greyhounds a year. So why not rescue one? Go on. They make fabulous pets. They're very relaxed, almost lazy, elegant, beautiful, sensitive, serene, gentle with children, hardly bark and don't need constant attention. They may mistake a Jack Russell for a rabbit in the early days, before you've had time to retrain them, they may not be keen to come back when called. Otherwise I cannot fault them. But I can fault the owners and bookies. They need to spend a lot more on the dogs that have made them their fortunes.

 

The Guardian

[Ian]

I thought it was a good article but I really don't know how some of those owners & bookies sleep at night

[Ian]

Worried about the jobs, their commitments (or is it profits?) not a word about the poor dogs.

 

Personally I think they should have a legal duty of care for those dogs, not just be able to dump them when the money stops rolling in