GUEST
COMMENTARY (08-04-2005)
TUCSON WEEKLY
It's
time to end greyhound racing--and the abuse that goes
along with it
By
Catherine O'Sullivan
Last
month, nearly 100 racing greyhounds were seized by Pima
County on a raid at a kennel. The kennel is owned by John
Rippetoe. The dogs were underweight and infested with
fleas and ticks. On the heels of the deaths of eight local
dogs offloaded to Mexican dog tracks, greyhound rescue
groups throughout the country converged on the Old Pueblo.
As a community, we should be ashamed.
I've never understood why Tucson tolerates greyhound racing.
Dogs are not animals in the usual sense. They don't produce
useful products, provide us with food or even keep the
grass trimmed. We live with them because we like them.
We share our furniture with them, feed them scraps from
our tables. We talk to them as if they understand and
rely on them for friendship when no one else shows up.
Dogs admire us far more than we deserve and forgive us
when our actions don't warrant it. They are loyal to a
fault, joyful most of the time, and if they knock the
garbage over once in a while or take a dump on the neighbor's
lawn, well, it's a small price to pay.
I know more than a few people for whom their pet dog is
their best friend, confidant and companion. This is especially
true of lonely children and old people. A kid can connect
with his dog when no one else seems to care. And with
kids and grandkids spread hither and yon, if it wasn't
for the bichon frisé sitting on Granny's lap, she
wouldn't have anybody at all.
As a volunteer for the Greyhound Adoption League of Tucson,
I can say unequivocally that the greyhounds languishing
under the so-called care of people like Rippetoe are the
exact same creatures as Granny's bichon, the mutt you
loved as a kid or the golden retriever guiding the blind
person down Grant Road. The only difference is that, unfortunately,
greyhounds run faster.
Or there may be one other difference: Greyhounds are sweeter.
I've seen dogs so abused, they piss themselves upon a
human entering their kennel--dogs so unaccustomed to any
human kindness that teaching them to accept a collar and
lead requires months or, on occasion, years. There's a
category in greyhound rescue jargon called "spooks."
A spook is a dog so traumatized by neglect and abuse,
it bolts in the presence of any human being. It describes
a dog which, when taken to a foster home, heads straight
for the closet and won't come out for days, weeks or at
all. I've seen all these things, but never have I seen
a greyhound behave aggressively toward a human being.
Not once.
There was a time in which I thought things were getting
better. When I moved to Tucson, there were regular newspaper
reports of dead racers found in the desert. They'd have
their ears cut off. That's where the tattoos were, identifying
the kennels they belonged to.
Now, I'm not so sure. The Greyhound Adoption League was
evicted from its permanent kennel last November. Since
then, it's been operating like an underground railroad,
taking dogs directly from the track, often to places out
of state. GAL used to handle upwards of 600 dogs a year;
it does not handle nearly that many now. Instead, they
languish in crates at the track, or kennels like Rippetoe's.
Generally, when they start to die, somebody notices. It
stinks.
I was working at GAL one morning, cleaning kennels and
feeding, when a guy from the track brought four dogs in.
They wore metal muzzles and strained at their leashes
like refugees charging a closing border. Three were underweight
and flea-bitten, but one looked worse than the rest. Upon
inspection, it became obvious she was infested with hundreds
of ticks, in her ears, between the pads of her paws, around
her genitals--everywhere. Her entire right side was stained
yellow from being crated, in her own urine, for weeks,
maybe longer. We washed her three times and could not
get the stain out.
All this sticks in my mind, but not as much as what the
guy said as he handed me the dog. "This bitch ain't
made me a nickel in damn near a year, but I still took
care of her."
I wanted to shoot him. Now that I think about it, I still
do.
