In my will I have left money to the greyhound trust and if my entire family died before me or with me they would get my entire estate.
I have read the leaflet put out and I am angered by it. I have also come across some allegations about the management and awarding of contracts, which whilst I have no way of verifying, I am sufficiently concerned enough to change my will.

I thought the wording of that leaflet was a complete insult to greyhound racing. I feel that there should be an investigation into these issues. Until things change I have changed my will and left it to Dogs Trust.

Carl Harris

In response to the letter published today, from Alison Duce.

I have spent most of this weekend progressing through various states of initial annoyance, to becoming increasingly cross!

I, like many others, saw the latest Greyhound Trust marketing literature for the first time, and the resultant fallout via social media – and frankly I find the current approach of an organisation (who exist to work in partnership with our industry) to be an insult to all of us who invest time, money and a huge amount of love into these amazing athletes.

To suggest racing greyhounds may not have known love, and that they need a “soft place to curl up …” creates the impression to those with no knowledge of our sport that these majestic creatures may have been previously living rough!

It seems to me that the instigator of the recent fundraising campaign is driving the Trust away from a partnership with owners, trainers and our industry as a whole – perhaps, as suggested by some this weekend, moving the ‘politics’ of the GT towards the ‘dark side’…… a very slippery slope!

…… this should not be something which is allowed to continue – it demotes the excellent work of those running and volunteering at local GT branches (and no doubt demoralises some of them too) and it alienates those of us who work hard to promote the sport whilst also supporting the Trust itself, financially or otherwise – not to mention reducing our fabulous greyhounds to a status of ‘victim’!! I imagine many will choose to support independent rehoming centres instead.

Can we have an official view from the GBGB on this please? I would be most interested ….

Elaine Moore (owner of Dreamstillalive and Sallys Legacy, racing at Monmore – and Funtime Zaine, currently roaching beside me, on his own two seater sofa)
I started my volunteering role at the Portsmouth branch of the RGT.  For those who don’t know this was one of the original branches of the RGT, owned and run by Molly Redpath, one of the founders of our dear RGT.  This was later taken on by her daughter Liz and is now run by Liz’s son and daughter in law.  This kennel was also a racing kennel where our first racing greyhounds were trained.  Through volunteering and many cups of coffee with Liz, I learnt about the care and general husbandry of racing and retired greyhounds.  It was hard work but I loved every minute of the time I spent with those magical dogs.
I resolved that I would always take good care of our dogs and if I was going to be involved with the sport of greyhound racing that I would do my bit to take up the slack for the dogs that were owned by the people who can’t or the ever shrinking number of people who won’t take care of their dogs.
Like so many other people, I fell in love with the greyhounds, all of them, the dogs, the bitches, the quiet, the noisy, the shy, the boisterous, the big, the small, the black, brindle, fawn, white and every other colour and combination.  Watching them trotting off down the path to their new homes always gave me a buzz, it still does.
A little time went by and I put myself forward as a trustee when a position for volunteer trustee arose.  I was delighted and proud to continue.
The new CEO came into post just after I commenced my duties.  I was impressed by the way she took the bull by the horns and closed a few branches down. I’m not prepared to go into the details here but she did exactly the right thing and I take my hat off to her.  The trouble was that she really wasn’t taking the other branches with her.  They were left with the impression that she’d gone in in an unnecessarily heavy handed way and picked on some vulnerable people and branches.  A bit of candidness on her part wouldn’t have gone amiss.
Far from trying to embrace the branches and be embraced by them, with one or two exceptions she remained remote and inaccessible.  This did nothing to help a situation that was becoming unhappy in a lot of quarters.
Personally I found the CEO to be somewhat mercurial and occasionally discourteous, but I could live with that.  I didn’t remain as a trustee for long and again, this is not the place to explain why but I can assure anyone who might be interested that the CEO was not particularly part of the reason for my resignation.
Criticism of the RGT continued to grow and with some justification.  The rebranding exercise was completely pointless and really I can only describe it as a vanity project and this caused real unhappiness among supporters and branches that I have met in my travels with greyhounds.  But I would still maintain my support for some of the things that the RGT did, although it was becoming more difficult as time went on.
The alarming rate of staff turnover at head office should have been a point of serious concern for the trustees, but apparently not.  The claim that people left because of the move is spurious, people are still leaving when that address was their original employment address.
One of the things that we were assured of under the guidance of the CEO was that greyhounds would never be used as objects of pity and that their lives as racing dogs should be celebrated.  For me this was a refreshing approach and I always continued to fight her corner even though the celebration of the racing life never materialised.  But then, the latest fundraising publicity has hit the social media and the doormats of supporters.
I’m sure by now that everyone who is reading this has also seen the publicity that I’m talking about.  Poor greyhounds who need a head office building for them before it’s too late and the poor dogs who live empty and unloved lives in kennels and the Rainbow Bridge Memorial Garden to remember the dogs who never made it into a home.  Dear god in heaven, what an insult that is!  Dogs being used as objects of pity and the people like me, who love and care for their dogs, chucked to the anti racing wolves.  All this just as seismic, if rather overdue changes in the approach to welfare is being undertaken by the GBGB.
A U turn and a bit of humble pie wouldn’t go amiss.
Jayne Conway