Winners and Losers
Thousands of greyhounds are killed each year as the declining dog-racing industry struggles to stay alive. Some puppies are killed in the name of “selective breeding” before they ever touch a racetrack. Dogs who do qualify to become racers typically live in cages and are kept muzzled by their trainers at all times. Many exhibit crate and muzzle sores and suffer from infestations of internal and external parasites. Although they are extremely sensitive to temperature because of their lack of body fat and thin coats, greyhounds are forced to race in extreme conditions—ranging from subzero temperatures to sweltering heat of more than 100°F.
Sickness and injuries—including broken legs, heatstroke, and heart attacks—claim the lives of many dogs before they are ever “retired.” Others—such as Randad, a dog in Alabama—are victims of track machinery. Randad was electrocuted when he jumped onto the lure rail and became entangled on the mechanical lure.(4) Another dog, Tune Me In, suffered for 30 minutes before being euthanized after he was badly cut by a mechanical lure at a Florida track.(5) During a three-year span, almost 500 greyhounds were injured while racing on Massachusetts tracks.(6) One Iowa track’s general manager defended greyhound casualties at his track by claiming that “top-notch dogs run harder and are more injury-prone.”(7)
Other dogs die during transport from one racetrack to another. It is common practice in the industry to carry up to 60 greyhounds in one truck, with two or three dogs per crate, and to line the floor of these “haulers” with ice rather than providing air conditioning.(8) The backs of these trucks reach temperatures in excess of 100°F on a summer day, deadly conditions for animals who cannot sweat in order to cool themselves. Several greyhounds died on a truck during a 100-mile trip between Naples and Miami.(9)
Conditions for the animals “at home” are often not much better. In 2005, 73 greyhounds died in a West Virginia kennel that went up in flames because of a faulty ceiling fan. Only five years earlier, more than 50 dogs died from heatstroke when an air conditioner malfunctioned in a kennel owned by the same man.(10) A Massachusetts man was charged with cruelty to animals after 10 greyhounds at his farm were found to be severely dehydrated and suffering from malnutrition.(11)
Most dogs who slow down and become unprofitable are either killed immediately or sold to research laboratories. In 2002, a former greyhound kennel owner and an assistant faced felony charges for selling more than 1,000 greyhounds for medical experiments. They claimed to be running a greyhound “adoption agency.”(12) Some unwanted dogs suffer further cruelty. In one case at Idaho’s Coeur d’Alene Greyhound Park, a female greyhound was taken from her crate and placed in the middle of a crowded room on a wet floor. A man then shoved a metal wire into her rectum and attached an alligator clip onto her lip, and she was electrocuted. Witnesses said that it was not the first time that a race dog at the park had been killed in this manner.(13) The state of Idaho has since banned dog racing.