part time believer

I’m not actually strongly for or against organized hound racing. A greyhound is born to run, and there’s nothing inherently abusive about letting a fast dog run in a circle to see which dog is fastest. Working dogs clearly enjoy their work.

The biggest issue I have with racing (this includes horse racing) is that when the impetus is there to make money, you have a high churn rate for your animals. What I mean by this is, you go through them quickly and retire them young and then keep breeding more.

A race horse is often completely spent by the time it’s 4, and they are often injured because they’re trained so young that it stresses their developing bodies. Similarly with a greyhound, the majority of the racers only race for one season, maybe two if they’re good, before being retired and replaced by a younger dog. I agree wholeheartedly that a working animal should be allowed to work and have a job. Working breeds NEED work. A greyhound needs to run.

But if the animal can only run for one season and then be retired to an ordinary pet home anyway, we can’t very well rely on a racetrack to give the animal work for its whole life. I wouldn’t work a cattle dog for one growing season. A dog can live to be almost 15, one season of work won’t suffice.

That’s not to say that the people involved in racing are bad to the dogs. For an animal to be an athlete it needs good food and exercise, and the sport has a very impressive adoption rate finding homes for the animals post season, some figures over 90%, and those animals are well adjusted pets in the private sector.

Even without bans, greyhound racing has been declining for a long time now, but the issue with the legislation is it in no way accounts for the care of the 8,000 or so dogs that don’t have a job any more. Many of those animals are now going to end up in shelters or in emergency homes that aren’t equipped for their care. Some unscrupulous or very desperate former dog runners might also simply have the dogs destroyed. It also smacks of a larger and seedier trend of seeing any kind of exercise or training as abusive to the animal. There’s nothing wrong with training and conditioning a dog, whether it’s a working dog or a personal pet, but the way some AR groups operate you wouldn’t think so.

While there has been a lot of noise over the last few years about banning greyhound racing, and it has happened in one state, I have not been in favor of banning the sport, but I wanted to see the money dry up for the industry and gambling associated with it.

There are two types of greyhound breeders, trainers and racers:

The ‘pet with a job’ type, who own one to three dogs their entire life, race them for fun on a Friday/weekend, and the humans have a job outside of racing.

The industry type, which own dozens or hundreds of dogs, are playing a numbers game, race at every meet, usually multiple dogs per night, sometimes multiple dogs per race and churn through these animals.

Now it should be fairly obvious that I have different views on these two groups. One is racing for fun and pocket money, and often doesn’t push the dogs beyond reason (mistakes can be made of course, but they usually regret it). The other is racing as a business, and the dogs are assets.

Here greyhounds are not racing before they’re 2, and they will often continue racing until they’re 4, occasionally up to 5 or 6. For reference, 7 would be considered ‘senior’ for such a large breed. So, baring major injury, they’re capable of a reasonable racing career compared to a racehorse. The older racers are, in my experience, usually owned by the ‘pet with a job’ type.

( And when I talk about ‘major injury’, a career-ending injury doesn’t always result in euthanasia for the dog. Some injuries mean the dog wont race competitively, but it can still trot around the park. )

A ban to take place in one year at least allows for people to stop breeding more greyhounds, but litters on the ground now will find themselves without a ‘job’ by the time they would be ready to race. A year to close the industry is not a very long time, and what will probably happen is that many of these dogs will be sold to adjacent states for racing. That’s what we saw when the ACT banned greyhound racing.

Another issue is that there are people who gain 100% of their income from greyhound racing and don’t have the skills to switch industries. These people are severely affected by such bans coming in over such a short period of time. That’s not the people that own hundreds of dogs, it’s the people working for those people who are affected.

My preference would be to see the sponsors for the gambling dry up. If there’s a $100,000 prize for the winner of a race, the owners of those dogs will probably push them more, or engage in more questionable practices than if it’s just a $250 prize. If you’re competing for $250 you can still have fun if you win that night, but it’s not worth wrecking your dog over. When we’re talking about thousands and thousands of dollars though, it’s stopped being about the animals, or about fun, and it’s just about numbers and money.

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