GBGB registrar Dave Levy reports that greyhound registrations are down roughly 1,000 since the equivalent period in 2019. By means of comparison, for the the full year, there were 7,252 greyhounds registered. This is despite a recent late surge as owners attempt to register new dog before the introduction of the retirement bond scheme.
The news comes as no surprise to small Irish owners like Shane Flanagan from Co. Clare. Shane only ever has three or four racing dogs and a couple of coursers at a time and most of his runners begin their careers at Galway. Among those who passed through his hands was Monday’s Derby Trialstake winner Rockmount Ozzy.
Shane said: “I’m like a lot of the smaller owners. We don’t have the numbers like the Dunphys or the Ballymac man, but we probably account for 60-70% of the dogs going over and asking around, we have definitely noticed a drop in interest. But it has only really been noticeable within the last month or so.
“I hadn’t really been following the situation about the owners not being allowed into the tracks, and maybe that played a part. Hopefully after what I read on the site today, we could be getting through that.
“But there are a lot of young dogs that are filling the kennels that would normally have been gone after a race or a couple of races and then you replace them. But it has been hard to get races for them. I have a September bitch who, but for the shut down, would probably have been sold on back in April.
“Then of course there would be the sales. Thurles sales would be shifting 130-140 dogs every month, it kept the thing ticking over. I sell most of my dogs on the internet and they would go all over the UK, but it has all gone very quiet.”
