EDITORS CHAIR: HOW ‘THE ANTIS’ ACTUALLY DAMAGE WELFARE

Have you ever heard of ‘Scout’ mentality?

It is concept coined by writer Julia Galef  to describe ‘motivated reasoning’.  Basically, it describes the ability to accept new information and revise your opinion accordingly, even if that means accepting data that you don’t want to hear.

Scouts are not always popular.

Scout: “General, I have spent hours secretly observing the enemy. They have more troops, superior weapons and better positions than us.”

General: “You are wrong. You don’t know how to count and you are undermining our morale. You traitorous bastard!”

Now only an idiot would claim that greyhound racing does not have its issues. At any one time there are probably 20,000 dogs in training at GBGB tracks. There are at least 800 trainers on 23 tracks, plus thousands more ex-racers and unlicensed people connected with greyhounds.

How many opportunities is that for it all to go pear-shaped?

Every so often something will go wrong. A dishonest or cruel individual with acquire a greyhound. A trainer will make a bad decision about an illness or injury to one of his dogs. A relationship breakdown will see a greyhound abandoned. A caring decent person will develop mental health issues and cause immense suffering by animal hoarding. Or someone throws a dog into the freezing North Sea (allegedly).

All are inevitable from time to time.

What’s more, the majority of those issues cannot be preempted. Even if the perpetrators are licensed by the regulatory authority, they can only react after the damage is done.

If you believe that greyhound racing is intrinsically cruel, all the above only reinforces your view. Dog people are scum. There is probably loads more going on being kept hidden by GBGB.

If that view takes hold. . . . why wouldn’t you pick up a placard and picket a dog track?

Find a cause to fight for. Do some good. Give your life some purpose.

Of course the last thing you want to hear is that you are supporting a lie.

But you are! While greyhound racing is not perfect, there has been a night-to-day transformation in the industry in the last 40 years.

RETIREMENT – I remember a time when a large percentage of dogs were routinely put to sleep at the end of their careers. There were various reasons for this, and not all are appreciated.

Greyhounds were frequently more aggressive back then and less easily homed. Fights between dogs and even fatalities were much more common. I saw it at first hand, greyhounds literally ripping each other pieces. It still happens occasionally, even with a litter of pups.

Basically, the idea that “greyhounds do not make good pets, bar the odd one” was pretty widespread, even among many greyhound folk – and it wasn’t entirely without foundation. Many would not have been safe around other pets, and is some cases, even children.

Many owners chose paying for euthanasia rather than risk selling their ageing racers onto the flaps, or into the hands of the travelers. Worse still – to the vivisection laboratories. That was the ‘dogs sold to China’ headline of the 1970s. It was followed by the ‘greyhounds shipped off to Spain’ saga until it too was shut down.

As with the China episode – unscrupulous individuals,  invariably with no background in the greyhound industry – pedaled false stories when buying low value dogs and making a quick buck. They were eventually discovered and shut down.

Some owners therefore had their greyhounds destroyed in clear conscience – some owners and trainers didn’t have a conscience about it. If you are a struggling Irish farmer, how do you differentiate between a heifer that is no use to you and a greyhound with a similar commercial value?

It also has to be said, we were a less animal friendly society back then and that was reflected in greyhound racing.

In 1992, the Retired Greyhound Trust budget was just £55K. By 1997, the RGT conceded that only 13% of ex-racers were re-homed. Last year, the RGT income was £4.1m and they re-homed 3,811 greyhounds. That is almost exactly 50% of the number registered.

But what of the 50% who are unaccounted for?

How many were re-homed by the dozens of independent home-finding kennels, some of which were referred to by John Curran recently as the bedrock of his retirement plan at Kinsley?

The independent kennels will never provide their homing figures. Yet some of them are among the ‘antis’ who condemn the industry for not being able to account for all of its ex-racers!

How many greyhounds are taken home by their owners? How many are re-homed by their trainers or are still in their trainers kennels? There are known to be several thousand ex-racers living out their days in racing kennels.

As more tracks adapt the ‘every dog re-homed’ strategy initiated by Kinsley and Yarmouth, this entire ‘anti racing’ argument will disappear.

NON-RACERS 

This subject concerning greyhounds who don’t make the track was covered  recently.

To summarise, in 1997 there were 4,632 litters born in Britain and Ireland. In 2016 there were 2,741. A decline of 41%.

In 1997 there were 67,762 races under GBGB rules. In 2016 there were 51,720. A 24% decrease.

There are now no greyhounds that are too slow to race and those who don’t want to race are often more sought after than those who do!

INJURIES

Injuries are part of athletic sport. For some abolitionists, the thought that a single greyhound should be injured in a year is enough to justify banning the sport. I say ‘sport’ not industry, because greyhounds would get injured running around a track, or on a straight gallop, with or without a hare, a crowd, or a bookmaker in sight.

Besides – among the many points that GBGB and its predecessors haven’t even attempted to address, is the fact that the vast majority of injures are ‘performance affecting’, not ‘life threatening’.

They would range from a sore shoulder to a broken leg. Unlike racehorses, very very rarely is a severe injury, such as a broken leg likely to be critical. Most ‘career ending injuries’ are determined by the length of recovery and age and ability of the dog – not the severity of the injury.

Great efforts have been made to improve track preparation. There was a time when the sight of three trackstaff raking a bend in between races was considered track preparation. If the dogs were lucky, a tractor might tow around a metal plate twice during the meeting.

Modern tracks have tens of thousands of pounds of crumblers, deep harrows, scarifiers, bore holes, watering and expensive drainage systems.

Trainers have access to more lasers, faradic and ultrasound equipment than ever before. I confess, I am not convinced that the level of trainer expertise is any higher than it was when I was a kennel-lad, but there is no lack of effort.

For those who still dismiss our efforts, assume that every broken hock is a death, or take a moral position that ‘dogs can’t decide for themselves’ whether to race, I take the following view:

I was the dad who watched his 12 year old daughter and her two grand nag, beat the bejesus out of a group of posh gals on £30K steeds in the gymkhana ring. It was dangerous. I saw serious injuries to horse and rider. But it never occurred to me that I should try to stop her.

I know of people whose sons who have been badly injured in rugby scrums or on the back of motorbikes.

Was I – are they – morally bankrupt parents?

Animal welfare is not a black and white issue. Most of us are on a spectrum somewhere between bull baiting and fitting soft bumpers on our cars so we don’t injure the bunnies.

So how do the antis actually make life worse for greyhounds?

While your principles must be sacrosanct, your views should always be malleable. Be a scout. Don’t be frightened to address facts that are not compatible with your perceptions.

I used to give the antis the benefit of the doubt. ‘If I believed what they believe, I would probably be an anti too!’ The problem is – they don’t believe that. Not the shrewd ones anyway.

I recently took issue with one of the leading anti campaigners who published video footage of a dog not wanting to go into starting traps. The whole story reinforced the absolute myth that ‘they are forced to race’.

I know that is bullshit. She knows it is bullshit. It was a greyhound having a ‘I will not get off my bed/come to the gate/get out of the car’ moment.

Nor do greyhounds race – as was claimed on a radio station last week – that it is simply ‘because they are sighthounds’. More BS.

I would invite said lady to visit me in a white transporter van – as happened this last week. My little ‘Rushy’ reckoned it was Mark Wallis, ready to offer her a return to racing. She was well up for it and tried to jump in the back of the van.

Ungrateful bitch!

My biggest grievance isn’t the fact that these supposed welfarists take money off the gullible for ‘political lobbying’.

They know, we know, and the Government know, that greyhound racing is living up to its responsibilities under the Animal Welfare Bill. There is no likelihood of it being banned.

Instead of those tens of thousands, donated by the well meaning gullible going to . . . . . . .  would it not be better spent on genuine welfare?

BUT putting all that aside – the reason that I most despise the most extreme antis is because they force us to close ranks and defend individuals and institutions that we would rather not defend.

No trainer who really cares about his dogs wants to be in an industry with someone who doesn’t give a shit!

But if GBGB does its job and roots out the wrong-doers, the antis view it as a fund raising opportunity.

‘Look everyone, greyhounds are doped, just like we said. Look everyone, they have closed down that kennel with those dogs in shocking condition. Let’s hope we can get some pictures, we can put them on our website and make some money’

HYPOCRITES!!!!

Greyhound racing would achieve far greater welfare progress if it didn’t permanently feel under threat from people prepared to lie and bend the truth for the sake of their own narrow agendas.

They target the triers and the non-triers with equal venom.

A good example came to light when Yarmouth’s Simon Franklin, conscious that his track tries harder than many, wanted to separate his injury statistics from the industry bulked figures. It didn’t go down well – particularly with some tracks whose efforts and figures are not so special.

Wouldn’t it be in (almost) everyone’s best interests: owners, trainers, genuine welfarists, and the greyhounds themselves, if tracks with particularly bad injury figures were exposed and made to sort them out?

There are trainers whose dogs are usually in poor order and who should be made to raise their game or be suspended. Instead, everyone worries about ‘not feeding the antis more propaganda.’

If you consider yourself a welfarist, ask yourself these questions.

1) Is your view based on what you ‘know’ first hand?

2) If so, is greyhound racing actually as bad as you presumed it to be?

3) Do you believe greyhound racing is striving to improve its welfare?

4) Do you think greyhound racing is likely to be banned any time soon?

5) Are your actions likely to help or hinder welfare progress in the greyhound industry?

Be a good scout – report what you see – not what you are afraid to find.