Going The Way Of The Greyhounds?

There was a time when everyone went to the races. Not just on Derby day, but every day.

Kids would play on the apron while their parents worked concessions. Neighbors would catch up over snacks and programs. There'd be a line at the betting windows. You still had to wear a jacket to get into the clubhouse.

You still see glimpses of the glory days in the movies, if the movie is old enough. My favorite is a group of scenes in the 2001 film 'Ocean's Eleven' where Brad Pitt recruits Carl Reiner into a burglary scheme mid-card under the cover of a cheering crowd. The boxes around them are packed as they stare contemplatively over the verdant infield, Reiner's losing tickets fluttering from his hand like confetti.

The same track was graced by celebrities in its heyday – Joe DiMaggio, Mickey Mantle, George Clooney, and others. Babe Ruth posed for photographers holding the lead of a winning racer on opening day in 1925.

Derby Lane, once known as the St. Petersburg Kennel Club and now simply Win! Derby, had been the oldest continuously operating greyhound track at the time of its death in late 2020. The kennels are silent now. The celebrities are gone. Families are spending afternoons elsewhere. The grandstand still stands for simulcasting, poker, and table games, but no one's eyes are on the racetrack anymore.

Derby Lane was one of 11 greyhound tracks that received orders to shutter by 2020 after voters in Florida's 2018 general election were overwhelmingly in favor of a constitutional amendment to ban wagering on dog races. The total handle from dog racing in Florida in the decade before the shutdown went from $291 million to less than $136 million.

Florida had been the centerpiece of dog racing at the time of the amendment's passage. In the 1980s and 1990s, believed by most to be the height of the sport in the U.S., a map of operating Greyhound tracks would have looked like a mini constellation blanketing the country. In 1990, Alabama had four operating tracks; Arizona, four; Colorado, five; Iowa, three; New Hampshire, three; Texas, three, and Florida 20. Even more states hosted one or two at the time. Through the years, most of the stars in the constellation have winked quietly and gone dark.

This year, there are only two remaining active dog tracks, both in West Virginia. The number of Greyhounds is shrinking, too. In 2015, the breed registry recorded over 10,000 new dogs; in 2021, the number was down to 2,200.

“I only have four or five years left of work left before I retire and god-willing I'll make it in this business,” said Jim Gartland, executive director of the National Greyhound Association. “But I have a lot of friends who are in their thirties, forties, fifties where this was their livelihood and their family's livelihood. At 45 years old after being in the business for 25 years, you don't just get up and do something else. It's hard, watching what's happening to these families.

“It's sad, and it's scary.”

When horse racing faces a challenge – a new public relations cringe or a threat to its social license to operate – the plight of the dogs has become a common refrain.

“If we don't change this,” people often say, “Horse racing is going to go the way of the greyhounds.”

But what does that mean?

Welfare concerns

When Steve Sarras steps out his back door in Wellsburg, W. Va., he's greeted by a chorus of yipping dogs – a few of the 75 he has on his property. Sarras is a second-generation Greyhound breeder with a breeding farm, a racing kennel, and is also president of the West Virginia Kennel Owners Association.

“What's not to like about working with dogs and puppies all day?” said Sarras.

Like most others in the Greyhound world, Sarras will tell you that a part of the closure of dog tracks around the United States in the last few years has come as a result of welfare and safety concerns raised by animal rights and animal welfare groups. He finds himself wondering, as he drives to check the climate control systems in his racing kennels, or cleans sand out of his dogs' nails with a toothbrush, how some of those narratives got started.

The first alarms were raised over the deaths of racers. Like horses, racing dogs can suffer injuries in the course of racing or training. Some of those injuries are fatal. Compared to Thoroughbreds however, the number of on-track racing deaths would seem to be extremely low. According to reports from West Virginia's Mardi Gras Casino and Resort last year, only one dog was euthanized by a state veterinarian at the track, due to Intervertebral Disc Disease. During that time, 4,481 races were held at the facility. The track reports all kinds of injuries, not just euthanasia events, to the state; last year, Mardi Gras saw 120 career-ending injuries total; its overall injury rate was 1.72 per 100 performances. That rate includes injuries such as broken nails, cuts, or strained muscles.

In decades gone by, no one seems to have thought too much about what happened to dogs outside the racetrack. In 1952, a report from the Greyhound Racing Record estimated that 30 percent of dogs bred to race actually made it to the track, leaving questions about where the other 70 percent went. In 2002, a track security guard was arrested after police learned he was accepting $10 each to take dogs to a property in Alabama and shoot them when they were done racing. They estimated he'd killed 1,000 to 3,000 dogs before he was caught.

The landscape for retiring dogs is completely different 21 years later. The racing Greyhound has become so popular as a pet that the demand for them far outstrips the supply. While capable of mind-boggling bursts of speed, most Greyhounds compensate by spending enormous stretches of their day sleeping. Many may retire somewhere between the ages of four and six, so when they arrive in a family's home, they're mature, housebroken, and have spent their lives socializing with other dogs and people.

Greyhound Pets of America launched in 1987 as a national umbrella organization for state-based adoption groups, and its network has assisted in the placement of over 100,000 dogs, both from the racetrack and the farm. Matt Schumitz, national vice president of GPA, says now 100 percent of dogs that don't retire to breeding careers end up in adoptive homes. Schumitz also heads the Massachusetts branch of GPA, where he says they have 50 to 60 people on a wait list for dogs. Some people are waiting a year or more to get a Greyhound, and some groups are now importing retired runners from overseas to feed the need.

“It's kind of nice because we can be really picky,” said Schumitz. “We can make sure the dogs are going into homes we'd trust our own dogs with.”

Greyhound adoption is fully supported by the industry. In recent years, each track had an in-house sanctioned adoption program which trainers could contact to get dogs placed. From there, dogs would be picked up and transported by volunteers to one of the many independent groups with adopters waiting. The track funded its in-house program based on placement numbers, and the groups also receive donations from owners via the American Greyhound Council.

Safety numbers improved, and aftercare was eventually all but solved. At some point, the dialogue shifted – the question was no longer whether racing dogs lived long lives. It was whether or not they were happy.

Drugs have been a scourge on dog racing since its foundation. The industry saw several cocaine positive scandals in recent decades – including charges involving dogs belonging to Sarras, which he says were later dropped due to issues with testing integrity. A 2018 report published by the American Veterinary Medical Association noted that in 20 years, officials in Florida tested 700,000 race-day samples from dogs and found 230 positives – a rate of .03 percent. The rate in post-race tests for horses last year was .43 percent, according to the Association of Racing Commissioners International.

Anti-racing groups tell the public dogs are being crated for up to 23 hours a day, fed poor-quality meat biproducts, and drugged to squeeze out every bit of profitability from them.

“We did track safety seminars, we made our racing surfaces safer; we made our kennels nicer and better-equipped,” Gartland. “The whole treatment of the animal has gone full circle. They're cared for better than a lot of kids in this country. But it wasn't enough to overcome what are, in most cases, the flat-out lies spread by animal rights agencies.

“I can remember when I was younger and this movement was starting with the animal rights people, probably in the late 1970s, early 1980s, and the reaction from the Greyhound community was, 'Screw them. They don't mean nothing, they don't know what we're doing.' I get it. It's the old-school attitude.”

Then, Gartland said the dog racing industry decided the groups may have a few good points. They implemented self-directed change to address some of the concerns. When that didn't halt the campaigns against them, they offered to work together with their detractors. In the face of what most in the industry viewed as lies, they invited the public to walk through racing kennels to see the conditions for themselves. It was too little, too late. Gartland says now he's not sure the relationship between the racers and their critics was ever going to turn out any other way.

Betting changes

The second hit in the one-two punch dealt to dog racing was on the balance sheet.

Racing horses and dogs had the monopoly on legal gambling for much of the last century, during which time both drew tremendous crowds. When new forms of gambling looked to expand outside of Las Vegas and Atlantic City, state legislatures required that in order to get a license for slot machines, poker, or other forms of gaming, casinos had to also offer live racing events.

Tom Rooney, president and CEO of the National Thoroughbred Racing Association, remembers the end of Greyhound racing in Florida well. His family owns the Palm Beach Kennel Club and Rooney worked at the track as a lead-out and a chart writer in his younger days. While he attributes most of the 2018 vote against dog racing in Florida to welfare concerns, there was a financial component, too.

Rooney recalls that when the state lottery was approved in Florida, Palm Beach Kennel Club began losing noticeable revenue. That, combined with the arrival of tribal gaming on protected lands, began to take its toll.

Most people say that learning to bet on dogs is a lot easier than learning to bet on horses. Program information is a little simpler; there's a grading system that makes it easy to quantify a dog's relative talent level. Dogs are also believed to be a lot more consistent. Unless they draw an outside box and encounter traffic, they're expected to run about the same time over the same distance in each start.

But despite not having the same heights to its learning curve as betting horse races, dog racing has drawbacks compared to other types of wagering. It still takes some degree of knowledge. Players must wait 10 or 12 minutes between racing events. While someone who comes to the track to bet the dogs may stop into the casino to play a game, it didn't seem to be working the other way around.

“I was told that our track was still one of the very few in Florida that was making money off the dogs, but most tracks weren't,” Rooney said. “So when it went away and they let the tracks keep poker, they didn't get too much resistance from the tracks like they normally would in something political like that.”

That issue – decoupling racing from casino gaming – became the biggest financial foe for racing dogs. Live racing, whether it's of horses or of dogs, is expensive to host. The payroll, the insurance, and the intangible costs of dealing with harassment from upset animal lovers are all a lot more draining than installing a bank of slot machines.

“It makes me mad because if not for racing they wouldn't have slot machines,” said Gartland. “It's unfortunate, but that's the facts of life.”

Gartland points to the recent end of dog racing at Southland Casino in West Memphis, Ark., which hosted its last race on New Year's Eve as part of a scheduled closure. Southland will continue operating its slots, table games, and sportsbook.

“They didn't quit racing at the end of the year; they quit racing a long time ago,” said Gartland. “Once they got slot machines they quit advertising, quit promoting, quit caring about it.”

Even Delaware North, which operates the last two dog racetracks in the country, would be happy to see it go. In a statement to West Virginia Public Broadcasting last year, Delaware North spokesman Glen White said attendance at Wheeling Island has dropped 60 percent while it has shrunk 40 percent at Mardi Gras.

Rooney finds himself worrying about the potential for a similar effort in horse racing states like Louisiana where a large number of tracks are held by casino companies.

Nick James, lobbyist and executive director for the Texas Greyhound Association, said that while there had once been three active dog tracks in the state, there hasn't been live racing there since 2020. There has been no legislation to make dog racing or wagering on it illegal in Texas, and James said animal welfare concerns didn't play a role in the shutdown there. Newly filed legislation in Texas would give current horse and dog tracks preference in securing a casino license, but the bill's language would require Greyhound tracks to surrender their racing license should they be successful in securing a casino license.

At one time, the tracks ran year-round. As gambling there decreased, they each cut back to seasonal meets. Today, two of the Texas dog tracks are still awarded dates by the state racing commission, but elect not to run them because they say they can't afford to.

“I don't think we'll ever see dog racing in Texas again,” said James.

In West Virginia though, Sarras' outlook is sunny. Daily handle at Wheeling Island can often meet or exceed $1 million. While he knows part of the equation is the fact that West Virginia is the only source of dog racing in America anymore, he's not convinced that's the only reason handle numbers have remained strong.

“If there's no interest in it, I don't know what business takes in $1 million on a performance,” said Sarras.

The impact

No one has kept official numbers on how many people are put out of work each time a track has closed.

“The saddest thing about losing dog racing at Palm Beach Kennel Club for me was that we lost hundreds of employees overnight, a lot of which had worked at that track for 10, 20, 30 years,” said Rooney. “People who work at tracks tend to work at them for a long time.”

In Texas, James said the state's three tracks had at one time 18 kennel buildings each. Those may have 10 to 12 owners each, plus two to three helpers overseeing 55 to 65 dogs in each kennel. A few of those people took their operations elsewhere as racing slowed and then stopped in Texas, but James said many sold their equipment and started their careers over.

“They've ruined a lot of good programs, a lot of small businesses,” said Sarras of animal rights activists. “You're dealing with a lot of mom and pop operations, a lot of families. I've seen a lot of families get destroyed, I've seen a lot of families cry. I've seen people lose everything, lose their homes because of lies.”

Then there are the dogs. The annual registration numbers are expected to continue to drop, as it costs $3,000 to $4,000 per year to raise a puppy and there are few places to run one anymore. Everyone, from the breed registry to the adoption groups, fear that if and when dog racing ceases, the breed as we know it will also cease to exist. Backyard breeders may go on with a version of the Greyhound, but racing folk say a younger, high-energy dog going into family homes without the years of training isn't likely to remain as popular as the ex-racer.

Opponents

Depending on how you phrase your search request on Google for matters relating to greyhound racing, a majority of the results that come up on the first page originate from animal rights groups' websites. If you want to hear dog racing's side of the story, you have to already know what you're looking for.

Greyhound racing has had a number of detractors through the years – from PETA to the Humane Society of the United States to Animal Wellness Action. These groups are familiar to horse racing as well, as all of them deal with a variety of animal rights or animal welfare issues, including puppy mills, big game hunting, farm industry regulation, and the fur trade. Most of them are non-profits which rely on public funding to keep the lights on, and benefit from spreading their focus across issues that may speak to a broad range of donors.

 

First thoughts about#Greyhound racing?
USA: illegal in 42 states;
Vietnam: greyhound track closing March 2023;
57% of Australians &60% of Scots want #BanGreyhoundRacing@SeneddWales debating a ban.
Time for #Westminsterto #CutTheChase pic.twitter.com/xwpo9Q11eZ

— Abolish All Greyhound Racing (@AAGR_UK) February 1, 2023

In the spirit of knowing thine enemy, it's important to recognize the difference between the various groups. Animal welfare organizations lobby for what they consider to be responsible management of owned animals, including those used for food or sport. Animal rights organizations believe that there is no appropriate form of animal ownership or use, and may value liberation or euthanasia of animals in alternative to use by humans. If animal rights is at one end of a spectrum and animal welfare on the other, most groups fall somewhere within the spectrum, with some being more extreme than others.

But dog racing has its own, customized opposition in GREY2K. GREY2K was formed in 2001 and calls itself “the largest greyhound protection organization in the world.”

Those inside the Greyhound world say GREY2K is a wily foe. The organization's website is undeniably slick, with photos of dogs looking into the camera with soulful, expressive eyes emblazoned with bold-lettered phrases like “END THE CRUELTY” and “TAKE ACTION.” Much of GREY2K's power comes from its marketing, which dog racing insiders say pairs old images or videos out of context with half-truths or untrue generalizations designed to sensationalize. Insiders say this has long been effective with mainstream media, but has served the group even better as social media's influence has strengthened.

“They used to tell you this dog disappeared or this dog died,” Sarras said. “They'll put information out there and hope no one fact checks them.”

 

“PorPorPitifullMe” was born in May 2013. PorPorPitifullMe raced only 8 times before she died. In her last race @ Palm Beach Kennel Club. She “attempted to jump the rail” and was electrocuted. On behalf of PorPorPitifullMe, please vote YES on Prop 67. #flcrc #YouBetTheyDie pic.twitter.com/puye8nvaKv

— GREY2K USA Worldwide (@GREY2KUSA) February 27, 2018

GREY2K's website credits itself with victory for the 46 American dog tracks it says have closed since its creation in 2001. Even as active dog tracks have disappeared from most states and breeding numbers are down, GREY2K doesn't consider its work finished. The organization has now moved on to making sure it can't come back.

The group has an active petition demanding TwinSpires stop offering account wagering on dog racing in West Virginia and Mexico. It has also pushed legislation to make dog racing illegal in states that don't currently have it, and even to illegalize betting on dog racing by simulcast or ADW customers in states where there is no active dog track.

The frustration of Sarras and others in the dog racing industry is that despite its public perception as a group dedicated to dogs, GREY2K doesn't actually spend much money to care for, rescue, or rehome the animals themselves. (A commonality shared with PETA and other animal rights foes of horse racing.)

GREY2K is a 501(c)4, which means that unlike 501(c)3s, it's permitted to engage in some lobbying activity, per federal regulation. Its 2021 IRS Form 990 shows that while it took in just over $1 million that year, $330,579 went to salaries and $146,336 was spent in lobbying. Its sister organization, GREY2K USA Education Fund, exists to “sponsor Greyhounds as they are released from closing racetracks, research the pari-mutuel industry and educate the public about the cruelty of dog racing.” According to the Education Fund's 2021 tax forms, it took in $124,763 and gave just $22,250 to adoption groups.

Rooney said in his career as a legislator (he served five terms in the U.S. House of Representatives from 2009-19), he interacted with animal rights groups, sometimes ending up on the same side of a simple issue like banning imported ivory from elephant tusks. He doesn't think that ignoring them will make them go away, and instead reads as much of their marketing material as possible to understand the strategy he's up against. That doesn't mean he's going to do everything they want all the time, either.

“I've worked with them; I've been recognized by them in the past,” he said. “I just think you have to manage expectations when it comes to how much you're going to get into bed with certain groups. You have to keep in mind they have a responsibility to their constituency as well. You understand which side you're on, and why you're on that side.”

 

US Campaigners Urge Betting Company to Sever Ties with Greyhound Racing https://t.co/0P36lw1vuJ via @Jayseecosta

— GREY2K USA Worldwide (@GREY2KUSA) January 23, 2023

It's also important to remember that many of the groups' followers are sincere and passionate in their views.

“As much as I'm a romantic about watching Secretariat come around the final turn at Belmont, and it giving me chills and making me love the sport with all my fiber, a lot of those people feel the exact opposite,” he said. “They feel that animal is being forced to do something it doesn't want to do and it would be better off in the wild. They believe that as much as I believe the opposite. Thinking those people are going to change their minds is probably naive.”

Rooney is hopeful that horse racing has some advantages that dog racing didn't. Its economic footprint has always been larger. It has a presence on national television which has grown in the last decade. He sees successful coexistence of casino and racing interests at Oaklawn, where both parts of the facility stay busy during the winter season. But he acknowledges that doesn't mean survival is a foregone conclusion.

“There's bad people in horse racing; there's bad people in dog racing; there's bad people everywhere,” he said. “Our job is to weed them out and not let them define the whole industry.”

At its height, Kansas was the cradle for more Greyhound puppies than any other state. It's home to the breed's national registry and its hall of fame. At one point, the state boasted three tracks, though its last one closed in 2008. Still, Kansas remained the center of the breeding industry.

In other words, Kansas is to Greyhounds what Kentucky is to Thoroughbreds.

Dr. Kent Law, owner of the Veterinary Clinic of Symbioun in Abilene, Kan., opened his clinic in 1984 when about half his business was from Greyhounds. Law specializes in canine reproductive work, which has evolved from side-by-side insemination to surgical insemination and semen collection and freezing. At its peak, Law said his clinic was doing 3,000 to 4,000 insemination implants a year, sometimes as many as 18 in one day.

“As the tracks close, we do fewer breedings because there's lesser need for puppies,” said Law. “Right now we're probably only doing three to five breedings a day, and only maybe a third of those are Greyhounds.”

For Law, the difference in business has been made up by other working and hunting dog breeds so the clinic has been able to keep growing. But he knows that hasn't been true for other types of Greyhound-oriented businesses.

“We miss the Greyhound business, but it's a reality,” said Law. “We probably do more of the Greyhound work per breeder than we used to. But in Dickinson County here, there used to be 50 Greyhound farms. Now there's probably less than a dozen.”

In 2021, a bill was introduced into the Kansas senate to officially make dog racing as well as wagering on dog races illegal. This, in a state that generated $17.4 billion in agricultural cash receipts in 2020, with cattle being the highest-valued commodity, according to the USDA. It's not a place that most people associate with a lot of vegans or animal rights group members.

Gartland said the NGA was successful in getting the bill stopped, largely because it was able to connect with animal agricultural interests and raise the alarm about potential implications to them if one type of animal activity could be illegalized.

“We beat the ban, but it's probably going to come up again,” he said.

 

Vietnam track ordered to close! Read more and take action at https://t.co/ISdZoqTze3 pic.twitter.com/ZGx7a0H1Pz

— GREY2K USA Worldwide (@GREY2KUSA) January 26, 2023

What can we learn?

In Colorado last month, the state legislature's House Business Affairs and Labor Committee heard testimony on HB23-1041, which would prohibit wagering on simulcasted greyhound races.

The bill passed committee 10-0, to no one's surprise – it has bipartisan support. Colorado made dog racing itself illegal nine years ago, according to the bill's sponsors.

All of the opponents who testified against it were from the horse racing industry – because the legislation could remove income to their purse account.

“We're not fans of Greyhound racing either,” said Shannon Rushton, director of racing at Bally's Arapahoe Park before the committee, which had already made its detest for dog racing clear. “We don't like what they do.”

Many people in the Greyhound world are bitter towards horse racing. They feel betrayed, especially after the 2018 vote in Florida, when they say they requested help from the state's horse industries and didn't receive it.

Now that the time for help has come and gone, they have one message for the horse racing world: learn from our misfortune.

“Don't wait to speak up,” said TJ Beader, national welfare advisor to the adoption network Greyhound Pets of America, reflecting on the 2018 Florida vote. “Ally with the other animal-related industries that are coming under attack.

“There were many animal-related industries getting involved with the Greyhounds and supporting them. In that process they actually became educated in the true facts about Greyhound welfare.”

Gartland sees many of the same patterns repeating themselves in the equine world, too.

“Unfortunately in our many, many years of battling these people we've tried to get the horse industry and others on board with us and had little success,” he said “Our message was always, we're the low-hanging fruit.

“They're coming after us first, but eventually they'll come for you.”

The post Going The Way Of The Greyhounds? appeared first on Horse Racing News | Paulick Report.

Source of original post