Dog Racing
Comments by Tori Schofield - 1 Dec 2007

Hello.

First of all I want to say I agree with your page dedicated to stopping the abuse of dogs, and all animals. www.all-creatures.org/anex/dog.html

But I wanted to point out that your bit on greyhound racing isn't the whole truth! Could you please spare the time to hear my side of the story?

My mother was a greyhound trainer and yes we raced them.
Our dogs were treated like kings and queens.. they were very well looked after, well fed and groomed and they always had clean and soft beds to sleep on and their kennels were always kept clean. The kennels themselves were built indoors to keep out the weather and each separate kennel was large enough for two dogs to sprawl out comfortably and also had enough floor space for them to do their business on during the night if they needed to without getting it near their beds.

We had 3 acres of land for them to run around and play in all day and none of our dogs were ever unhappy. In the winter months we made jackets for them to wear and we kept heaters turned on so that they never felt the cold weather.

Our dogs were also well kept after they were retired and we kept them until they died naturally of old age. We had one dog who lived to the grand age of 18! We never let any of our dogs suffer and if there was nothing we could do to relieve that suffering then we did the humane thing of putting them to sleep.

Yes injuries were occasionally sustained, but as with any athlete (including humans) this is always a risk. If our dogs ever did get hurt they were always given the best medical treatment straight away and were given constant attention to help with their recovery. We never ran a dog who still had an injury, and if they couldn't run anymore, we retired them and they always ended up being one of our pets, or if we didn't have room, they went to very close friends and we kept a close eye on them afterwards (we did have one bad experience at the beginning when we gave a dog to someone we didn't know and the poor thing was found a few days later tied up in the middle of the highway with his ears cut off... that's why we never let anybody we didn't know have our dogs after that)

Now I'm not trying to say that all greyhound trainers treat their dogs as good as we did, but I just wanted you to know that there are some of us out there that love greyhounds, and all dogs, for what they are... Mans best friend.

Thank you for reading.

Go on to: Comments by Frank and Mary Hoffman - 1 Dec 2007
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