First past the post, or past it?
Have you ever "bet on the dogs" or gone to a race track for an evening
´s entertainment with your friends? If you have, I´m sure that you
enjoyed a civilised and pleasant evening. But look carefully behind
the "fun" image of this sport, and you´ll begin to uncover a sub-
culture of abuse, cruelty and slaughter.
There are over 30 race courses registered with the National Greyhound
Racing (NGRC) in the UK, and the NGRC co-ordinates the registration
of dogs, and acts as the judiciary and disciplinary body. Any dog
racing on these registered tracks must be identifiable by a totoo, and
kept with a registered trainer/ owner/ manager.
However, there are currently also over 50 independent tracks, and dogs
racing on these tracks have no protection, meaning that a huge slice
of the lucrative racing sector is completely unregulated.
Tha fastest dogs race on the regulated tracks, therefore when the
fateful day comes and the dog is no longer " first past the post", it
is either destroyrd or sold on to the independent sector. Here it may
race for another year or two before, finally, worn out and deemed
useless, the dog will be abandoned or killed.
Consider the facts:
-Unregulated, independent tracks are not required to have a vet
present during racing events.
-Injured dogs may wait for hours in pain before they are treated.
-At the age of 4 or 5 , whee their racing career is over, many
greyhounds are slaughtered.
-In the UK alone 40,000 greyhounds are needlessly slaughterd each
year.
-Young dogs who do not make the grade will not even live to see
their first birthday. They will be destroyed.
-A slow or injured dog is not a profitable dog. Favourite disposal
methods include drowning, beating the dog to death, poison, shooting,
starvation and abandonment.
-Many abandoned dogs die in traffic accidents, as they wander,
hungry and bewildered, after being dumped. Many will simply starve to
death.
Don´t these gorgeous, elegant creatures deserve more after running for
our "entertainment"? Here´s how you can help.
Sign our petition on http://www.thepetitionsite.com/1/stop-the-greyhound-slaughter
. We are aiming for 20,000 signatures to present our protest to
Governments around the globe in March 2008.
And if you can afford to make a donation, please sign up on
http://apps.facebook.com/causes/view_cause/18204
The greyhounds thank you from the bottom of their hearts!
date: Thu, 18 Oct 2007 15:44:18 -0000
author: Lou Crowley
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