I will be interested to hear what conclusions the Government come to from their new study into greyhound racing.
There are lots of opinions about what we do as an industry and some of them appear very misguided. I’ve have phone calls in the middle of the night with people abusing me for being a greyhound trainer. The last phone call accusing me of being cruel was only just over a week ago.
But I can’t be the only trainer who has had a quiet moment and thought – is what I am doing cruel?
I always come to the same conclusion – no, my dogs have a great life. They love to race, they are fed like kings and they want for nothing.
Some people might question, ‘is it cruel that they spend 18 hours a day in their kennels if they aren’t racing?’
My answer would be, you try and get some of our dogs off their beds. They really resent it. You can’t apply human demands to a dog. They sleep a lot longer than we do, and they don’t want the same mental stimulation that we do. If do things differently made my dogs happier, I would do it.
Of course the real bone of contention is injuries and I am quite happy to discuss them with anyone.
In the last year, we have had one dog put to sleep. That was the Towcester sprint record holder Cloudbursting and he had suffered from a series of fits.
We took the best veterinary opinion and we were advised that it was in the dogs best interests that he be put down. Apparently, once the fits have started, they become more frequent and it is very distressing for the poor animal.
It broke all our hearts. He was a lovely young dog who was still to reach his peak and an absolutely splendid specimen of a greyhound.
So – what about the injuries? We have 90 dogs here including a few ex-racers in retirement.
Of the 80 potential runners, eight are currently being treated for a variety of different injuries including muscle tears, a broken toe, and a damaged TFL. I expect all of them to return to racing.
The two long term injuries were broken hocks and I expect both of them to race again.
In total we have had five broken hock, three of which have, or will, race again and two others who have been retired. We also had a bitch with a cruciate ligament injury. She was young and was was homed by the RGT.
I keep meticulous records and in terms of our graded dogs at Towcester, the injury rate is very low indeed, in fact roughly 50% per runner less than compared with the open racers running elsewhere.
I feel sorry for Towcester. They had a couple of high profile injuries and because of the profile of the track, it became a big story. I have never had any injury concerns there. Quite the opposite.
I can understand why the industry doesn’t want to publish injury data. There are people out there with no agenda other than to shut down greyhound racing and they will manipulate any data to suit themselves.
I know as well as anybody that injuries are inevitable but they are very seldom terminal. But the antis don’t want to hear that.
I have often challenged them to come to the kennel, suitably supervised, to see the reality, but they never come.
However, I would like to see the injury data collected by the track vets put to good use. I understand that the GBGB monitor injury peaks, but could we make more use of the information.
For example, might we discover that some kennels have very high incidences of particular injuries. Or the opposite?
Do some kennels have better regimes for preventing injuries than others?
I strongly believe in a proactive approach to injuries, rather than a reactive one and in general, it ‘appears’ that we get less injuries than some of the other kennels.
At least I think we do. The statistics would tell for me certain. They might also indicate who I could learn from.
