World Animal Foundation - Adopt An Animal

Greyhound

Racing

Winners and Losers

An estimated 28,000 greyhounds are killed each year

as the greyhound racing business struggles to stay alive.

Although only about 30 percent of the greyhounds born in the

industry will ever touch a racetrack, greyhounds who do qualify to become racers at 18 months typically live in cages, some as small as three foot by three foot, for roughly 22 hours each day. Some are kept muzzled by their trainers almost constantly. Many exhibit crate and muzzle sores, and are frequently infested with internal and external parasites. Greyhounds are forced to race in extreme weather conditions from sub zero weather to temperatures reaching over 100 degrees. As of 1998, a total of 49 tracks were holding live greyhound racing. These tracks are in Alabama, Arizona, Arkansas, Colorado, Connecticut, Florida, Iowa, Kansas, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Oregon, Rhode Island, Texas, West Virginia, and Wisconsin.

Greyhounds are "retired" when they become unprofitable through injury or failure to win races. Few make it to the mandated retirement age of five years. Injuries and sickness--broken legs, heat stroke, heart attacks--claim many dogs. Some are accidentally electrocuted or otherwise injured by lures during a race. Most dogs who slow down and become unprofitable are either killed immediately or sold to research laboratories. At Colorado State University alone, from January 1995 to March 1998, a total of 2,650 unwanted racing greyhounds were donated to research by local breeders. About five percent of retired greyhounds are placed in adoptive homes. A few of the big winners are kept for breeding. One retired greyhound breeder put it this way: "If (the dogs) run off the track and can't requalify, they're stuck out back and lucky if they're fed."

Because of the all-pervasive economic interests, many greyhound owners and trainers have kept dogs in deplorable conditions and killed them in cheap, cruel ways. In April 1998, the rotting carcasses of 45 dead greyhounds were discovered outside St. Louis. The dogs' ears had been cut off to remove identifying tattoos. In one instance in Arizona, 143 greyhounds were found shot to death and hidden in an orchard. A top racer was charged with criminal littering. In 1990, two Arizona kennelmen who so neglected their dogs that 25 had to be euthanized, were fined just $500 each and had their racing licenses revoked. After that came the discovery of two dogs in a dumpster outside a Phoenix kennel, battered, but still alive. Seventy other dogs in the kennel were underfed and tick-infested. The trainer had his license suspended. There have also been cases of dogs found abandoned in padlocked kennels, starving and suffering from dehydration. Two hundred starving dogs were found in a Florida kennel in 1991. In 1992, 87 dogs perished in a Massachusetts kennel arson fire. In Jacksonville, Florida, 20 greyhounds died when the air-conditioning system in their kennel failed.

Some unwanted dogs are abused for entertainment. Witnesses described the "Tijuana Hot Plate" that took place after a race at the Coeur d'Alene Greyhound Park in which an unwanted female greyhound was taken from her crate and placed in the middle of a crowded room where revelers partook in marijuana and cocaine. She stood on the wetted floor while a man put a metal wire inside her rectum and an alligator clip on her lip. She was then electrocuted. Witnesses said that it was not the first time a race dog had been killed this way.

Other Victims

Each year approximately 100,000 small animals--most of them rabbits--are used as live bait to teach dogs to chase lures around the track. The dogs are encouraged to chase and kill live lures hanging from a horizontal pole so they will chase the inanimate lures used during the actual races. "Bait animals" may be used repeatedly throughout the day, whether alive or dead. Rabbits' legs are sometimes broken so their cries will excite the dogs; guinea pigs are used because they scream. When animals are "used up," dogs are permitted to catch them and tear them apart. Trainers claim the use of live lures is necessary to teach dogs to be champion racers, and the cost of "bait animals" is low compared to the potential earnings of a winning dog. Less aggressive dogs are sometimes placed in a cage with a rabbit or other animal and not released or fed until they have killed the cage companion.

A small percentage of greyhounds are trained using an artificial rabbit lure. However, in Massachusetts and other states where training with live animals is illegal, owners often send their dogs out of state for training, thus circumventing the state's humane intentions. Many dogs are trained in Texas and Kansas, where anti-cruelty codes are weaker or less strictly enforced than in other states.

Help and Hope

Because greyhounds are usually gentle, quiet, and friendly, some of the lucky dogs are placed into caring homes. The Greyhound Protection League (P.O. Box 620863, Woodside, CA 94062; 1-800-4-HOUNDS; www.greyhounds.org) organizes adoption programs throughout the country and distributes information about the racing industry.

Although adoption helps, the only way to protect greyhounds from abuse is to put an end to racing. Due to the grassroots efforts of concerned citizens, live dog racing has been banned in seven states: Maine, Virginia, Vermont, Idaho, Washington, Nevada and North Carolina.

Fortunately, greyhound racing is losing its popularity. Sports Illustrated stated "Pari-mutuel betting as a whole has dropped by $1 billion in the last decade and this sport especially has gone to the dogs."

Ways to keep people from patronizing tracks include leafletting at a local track, lobbying for a ban in your state (whether there are currently dog tracks or not), and writing letters to the editor opposing greyhound racing.

References

1.Michelmore, Peter, "Hidden Shame of an American Sport," Reader's Digest, Aug. 1992, p. 104.

2.Ibid.

Bronson, Betty, "Racing Greyhounds Mistreated," St. Louis Globe-Democrat, April 9, 1986.

3.Karasik, Gary, "You Can Bet Their Life on It," Miami Herald Tropic, Oct. 21, 1990, p. 8.

4.Schultze, Steve, "Animal Cruelty Issues Raised in Fight on Legalizing Racing," The Milwaukee Journal, March 29, 1987, p. 19A.

5.Karasik, p. 8.

6.Michelmore, p. 104.

7.Karasik, p. 13.

8.Robert A. Erlandson, "Former Racing Greyhounds Rescued Just Under Wire," Baltimore Sun, July 12, 1991, p. 1D.

9.Michelmore, p. 105.

10.McClintock, Jack, "Run or Die," Life magazine, June/July 1991, p. 65.