Greyhound Racing's Good and Bad: My Story

Greyhound owners and trainers get a bad rep a lot of the time, the news stories of live lures, mass graves, drugging or anything else of that nature certainly doesn't help. Even the ones who do nothing wrong get dragged into the mud. Don't get me wrong, I met a lot of absolutely dirtbags who had no regards for their dogs when they were racing Greyhounds, but I also met some kind, caring people who appreciated not only the racing, but the Greyhounds themselves. We had a lot of Greyhounds when I was growing up. I remember after the races finished (especially night races where we all were hungry by the end of them), we would stop at McDonald's, get food and let the Greyhounds out for a break. The food wasn't always for ourselves though, the dogs all got a soft serve ice cream each to cool down, even if they had lost. Yes, our dogs were a bit spoilt, even though they had strict weights that they had to be. One of the dogs even slept on our beds in our house for most nights........oh who am I kidding, most of our dogs ended up having a sleepover in the house at one point!

Our winning Greyhound, had a slightly different past to our others. We watched trials one day and a person we knew was complaining about how useless his dog was. The guy was threatening to put it down (in front of everyone) and we heard. Our family quickly grouped together and decided we wanted this dog, so we asked him if we could have it. The dog was this timid thing and we were still fairly new to the racing scene, but as soon as this fawn colored beauty with brown eyes looked at us, something just clicked. We got the dog, and I think he shocked everyone, not just with his attitude change. My parents spent days on end training, caring for him, and all of us giving him the loving home he deserved and eventually things changed. His trials got better, his speed got faster and placings in races improved. Then, he won. The ironic thing was, mum had mentioned she needed new shoes hours earlier in front of this dog and clearly he had been listening. The previous owner was also there racing his dogs that night and made it fairly clear he was not impressed, but we didn't care. We won a few more races over time with our dog and placed in first 3 a few times too, but not wanting to run our best mate into the ground, we retired him. He turned into a great pet though, and lived the rest of his life out with our family at home. That feeling of standing trackside or up in the stands cheering our dogs on, win or lose will be something I won't forget. I won't forget standing by the parading yard before races chatting with my parents about who had dogs we thought would be strong competitors or being taught different things about the dogs by our friend who was one of the most popular and (in my opinion) the best Greyhound vet I'll ever know. And, every dog, family member and best friend we had when I was growing up, I won't forget. Despite what gets said about Greyhound owners and trainers, not all are total jerks. Some can be decent people who care about their dogs.