From: dgm@garnet.berkeley.edu (D.G. Meads)
Newsgroups: rec.pets.dogs
Subject: Reader's Digest-greyhounds
Date: 12 Nov 1992 20:41:14 GMT
Organization: University of California, Berkeley
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Reader's Digest
August 1992 ?

Hidden Shame of an American Sport	by Peter Michelmore

Clearing an abandoned garbage-strewn lemon grove in Chandler Heights, Ariz.,
last January, workmen discovered the bodies of 52 dogs scattered between
rows of withered trees.  They were lean, long-legged greyhounds.  Every one
of them had a bullet hole in the head.

Later, in the same killing field, investigators from the Arizona Department
of Racing turned up the bodies of 72 more greyhounds.  Most were two to three
years old, at their prime for racing.  The majority had been destroyed because
their trainer thought they were not fast enough to win purse money at any of the
four greyhound parks in Arizona.

To cover his tracks,  the killer had cut off the dogs' left ears, where 
identifying numbers were tattooed.  A few had been overlooked, however.  A
check with the registry at the National Greyhound Association, in Abilene, Kan.,matched one number to a dog named Bob's John and an owner in Texas.  The man
said the dog was on least to Glen McGaughey, operator of a racing kennel in
Phoenix and one of the most successful owner-trainers in the state.

McGaughey leased over a hundred dogs from owners in Florida, Kansas and Texas.
As is customary in greyhound racing,  he contracted to split the track
earnings - 35 percent for the owner, 65 percent for himself.

There was one added condition, say Gary Fitzsimmons, assistant director of
the Arizona Department of Racing:  "McGaughey would sign contracts with owners,
stating that if the dogs couldn't run, the owners would not get them back.
That's exactly what happened.  At least 70 of the dogs in the grove came
from McGaughey's kennel."

Because it is not illegal to shoot dogs in Arizona,  McGaughey was charged
with criminal littering.  Under a plea bargain, his license was revoked, and
he received a $25,000 fine and a suspended sentence.

McGaughey's mass slaughter in Chandler Heights, coupled with his callous pact
with the dog owners, is stark testimony to the shame of a fast-expanding
industry.

BETRAYING A TRUST.  For decades after its introduction to America in the
1920s, track racing fro greyhounds was largely confined to a few parks in
Florida and New England.  Most people considered it a fringe sport that would
eventually die out.  They were mistaken.  Last year the sport attracted
30 million bettors who wagered $3.4 billion at 58 dog parks in 18 states from
Florida to Oregon.  This created 100,000 jobs and $233 million in state tax
revenues.  In Wisconsin alone, five tracks have opened since April 1990.

Once every 13 minutes, on the groomed, sandy tracks, dogs break from their
boxes in headlong pursuit of a plastic lure that whirls ahead of them on a
revolving mechanical arm.  To watchers int he grandstand, the dogs are
running machines.  Up close, they surprise with their gentleness.  They are
nuzzling creatures, eager to please, their eyes agleam with trust.

It is a trust too often betrayed.  "The industry's growth has highlighted
the sport's problems, " admits Gary Guccione, secretary-treasurer of the
6500 member greyhound association.  "The public and many in the industry are
no longer willing to accept some of the traditional practices of greyhound
racing."

Most tracks offer nightly programs of 13 races, each with eight dogs.  They
are kenneled at or near the tracks by the trainers, who lease the dogs from
breeder-owners or people who buy greyhounds as an investment.  Each track is
served by about 20 kennels housing 1000 dogs.

Young greyhound puppies are bred every year in the United States, of which
perhaps half show sufficient promise to begin racing at age 16 to 18  months.
The fleetest, most lionhearted dogs may compete until five years of age, but
the majority are gone much earlier.  Some die of natural causes, a few
thousand are kept for breeding and 7,000 to 10,000 are adopted as pets.  The
rest are shot or given a lethal injection.  So, as 50,000 dogs come into the
industry each year, an equal number are taken out.

ANONYMOUS TIP.  No one is more adamant on the issue of humane treatment for
greyhounds than John Clark, who breeds them in Jacksonville, Fla.  In November
1991, jsut weeks after Clark had been appointed to the greyhound association
board of directors, an anonymous caller from Summerfield, in central Florida,
reported:  "There are three of us with dog farms on the same dirt road.  On
the farm next to me the dogs are starving.  If you don't do something, they'll
die."

Driving around Summerfield, Clark came to a place with dog crates and a dog
trailer in the yard.  Off to one side was a large, shuttered kennel.  A
young man stood in the yard.

Clark introduced himself and asked the man to get one of the dogs out of the
trailer.  He refused until Clark threatened to call the police; then the man
suddenly brought out a muzzled female,  her body skin and bones, her fur
matted with ticks, the backs of both legs covered in sores.

One by one, Clark inspected the other dogs.  All were emaciated and rank from 
lying in their own feces.  Clark was blinking back tears when he drove to
a pay phone.

A Marion County sheriff's deputy was assigned exclusively to animal cruelty
cases was a the kennel within the hour to arrest the young man and his
parents, who had been taking care of the dogs for an absentee owner.  Clark
and two other breeders, joined by adoption volunteers and a veterinarian,
saved all but one of the 194 animals barely clinging to life.

Officials with the Florida Division of Parimutuel Wagering, which regulates
the state's greyhound racing, say they could prevent such cases of abuse if
they were empowered by law to conduct random farm inspections and take
responsibility for the welfare of the dogs.

In Arizona,  state assembleyman Dave Carson was so incensed over the slaughter
in the lemon grove that, in February 1992, he introduced a bill requiring
registration of training farms and kennels an setting penalties for
maltreatment of dogs.  The bill was voted down twice in committee because the
dog-racing industry has a powerful voice in Phoenix.  A compromise version
has now been approved by the assembly and awaits decision by the Senate.

Industry leaders put part of the blame for abuses on the proliferation of
neglectful "back yard" breeders, who dream of producing the one champion
that could win $100,000 or more in purse money.  Yet, out of a greyhound
litter of six puppies, skilled breeders expect only four to make it to a
good track.  The back yard breeders can expect no more than two competitive
dogs, and chances are they will get none.

Also plaguing the sport are owners who take no responsibility for their dogs
once they stop making money.  If dogs cannot succeed at a main track like
Southland in Arkansas, where winning purses may be upward of $1,000, owners
usually allow trainers to truck them to secondary tracks.  Form there, the trail
leads to the poorest tracks, where the winner might score $150.  Failure here
most often means a one-way trip to the pound or last-ditch try at a Mexican
track.

CALL FOR HELP.  In the fall of 1990, 73 dogs were trucked from a low-end track
in Hinsdale, N.H., to a bottom-rung track in Key West, Fla.  Three of the
trainers drove off, leaving the dogs to the mercy of others.  A number were 
taken in for adoption by Paula Johnson's local Greyhound Rescue League.

Mary Baughman, a Johnson friend and former police officer, took a job at the
track as a kennel helper to keep her eye on the track's dogs.  She entered a
nightmare of fetid kennels, underfed dogs and yards fouled with feces,  "You
could hear the dogs crying, " says Baughman.  "I'd go home in a stupor,  but
I had to stomach it.  I had the chance to get some of those dogs out."

On Monday morning in January 1991, she arrived at the track to find more than
a hundred dogs vomiting in their crates.  Many were bleeding from the rectum.
Handlers blamed it on a virus caused by tainted meat.

Baughman left the track and began telephoning for help.  After three hours,
she reached the Miami investigation office of the Division of Parimutuel
Wagering.

"Is there anyone who give a damn about these dogs?" Baughman asked heatedly.

"You bet your life," said investigator Lyn Farrell.

Farrell zeroed in on the unsanitary conditions at the track and forced it to
close.  Baughman and Johnson rescued 175 of the greyhounds for adoption.

FRIENDLY HOMEBODIES.  To counter damaging publicity over the Key West horror,
many in the industry claimed it was an "isolated incident".  It was followed,
however, by the case of two Tucson, Ariz., kennelmen who so neglected their
dogs that 25 had to be put down.  Each man was fined just $500 and had his
racing license revoked.

After that came the grisly discovery of two greyhounds in a dumpster outside
a kennel in Phoenix.  They were battered and bleeding, still alive.  Seventy
other dogs in the kennel were underfed adn tick-infested.  This trainer also
had his license lifted.

Volunteer adoption agenices have sprung up across the country to promote and
place greyhouns as pets- since they make affectionate homebodies.  In
Wisconsin,  the tracks are required by the state racing board to have in-house
facilities to school the dogs in domestic life and to bring public and 
greyhound together.  Top tracks in other states are beginning to offer
similar services.

Still, from Key West to Summerfield to Chandler Heights, the terror continues
for greyhounds.  There will be no end to the abuses, say racing-commission
officials, until the greyhound states strengthen their laws in two major
areas:

	-Farm and kennel inspections to ensure that greyhounds are properly
	housed adn cared for, as well as harsher penalties for cruelty and
	neglect.  "We can get the job done, but we need the authority and
	money to do it, " says William Tabor, director of Florida's parimutuel
 	division.

	-Mandatory adoption programs at all tracks, modeled on the Wisconsin
	system.  Readers who wish to inquire about greyhound adoption may
	write the National Greyhound Adoption Network c/o Palo Alto
	Humane Society, PO Box 60715, Palo Alto, CA 94306.

The 18 states on the greyhound circuit conunt the sport as too valuable a 
source of revenue to close down.  What they must do, then, in concert with
the industry itself, is clean up the sport. 

On the awful day John Clark discovered the starving greyhounds in Summerfield,
he caressed each one as it came out of the trailer.  They were trembling,
but comforted by his gentle hands and quiet voice.  He had arrived just in time.
Behind the kennel, near a freshly dug pit, he found a stack of .22 caliber
bullet boxes.