Post by charlotte on Apr 11, 2015 12:56:29 GMT -5
I have been considering Greyhound adoption for months. Have read the Dummies Guide to Retired Racers and visit this forum often. I really, really want to adopt but I'm waiting a few more months to prepare my home a bit more. Fix some doors and paint the place before bringing a dog in. In the meantime, I continue to research.
I never had an opinion about racing because I never paid attention to it. I assume that people who handle animals would want the animals to be in the best physical and mental health possible. Of course, this can't always be the case, just look at people who handle children for a living. It usually is a positive and nurturing environment, but sometimes bad things happen.
Recently I read an article on this forum by Dennis Mckeon in which he talks about how nonsensical it would be for handlers and trainers of greyhounds to mistreat dogs. They wouldn't race as well, they would have horrible personalities and they wouldn't be so popular for adoption if they had the physical and mental attributes of abused animals.
Everything he said made perfect sense. In fact it made so much sense, I for the first time, went to Youtube to look at a race. Of course, I found a race and two BBC documentaries about the horrors of greyhound racing. Which I watched.
First of all, I want to say that watching the documentaries did not do anything to falter my faith in Dan McKeon's article. But I can't help but wonder it the atrocities that went on in these documentaries do not go on still, at some level, somewhere. One of the doc's took place in England and Scotland and one took place in Australia. Not in the U.S. where it seems we get most of our retired hounds.
In one, a man went undercover to buy a dog off a trainer. The trainer didn't own the dogs but housed them and trained them and also, bet on them. He was secretly recorded explaining how he could make a large amount of money off bets by "stopping" certain dogs. This means the dogs are drugged so they don't perform as well as they normally would for 4 to 5 races and sometimes be put at a lower level of racing. Then the drugging would stop and the dogs would start winning. The drugs damaged the kidneys of the dogs and it seems the owners didn't know that was happening. The guy was outed and fined something around $300 Australian dollars. But he'd made $30,000 in a month on combined races so it wasn't much of a disciplinary action. There were several greyhound owners that had been suspended repeatedly for doing the opposite, drugging the dogs with cocaine, viagra and other performance drugs so they ran faster. But the suspensions did nothing to stop them because the whole thing was still lucrative.
A system for testing dogs was put in place. But the company in charge of testing the dogs, was owned by the bookies. So that didn't work out.
I also saw a dog get injured in a run, which was awful to see. But less disturbing because all athletes suffer pain and injury sometime. I won't even go in to the amount of dogs destroyed.
Anyway, again this was in the UK and I'm not sure but I suspect these docs were made in the early nineties. The main point they made was that where there is so much money at stake, the money will in the end, always be the most important thing.
As a good example of this take a look at Jon Olivers statements about the NCAA (college basketball). youtu.be/pX8BXH3SJn0
I'm not posting any link to the racing docs I watched because I don't want to seem like I believe that this is happening and we're all being lied to and that I'm some hysterical crazy person. And I don't want to make any accusations about Dennis McKeon's article which I'm sure is accurate and well researched and he obviously has lived in the world of racing.
But I can't help but think there has to be a handful of dirty trainers out there. And from reading the forum I see that not all dogs come into homes with the personalities of a dog that has never been abused. Taking the fact that they are in totally unfamiliar settings in to consideration, it seems like there are dogs who would rather have not that much to do with humans. Again, just a handful, but there they are.
I'm not saying I'm sure these dogs were mishandled, I'm saying I'm unsure they weren't.
My only concerns here are, is there a way to test the health of a dogs kidney, a non evasive way, if one is concerned the dog may have been subject to one of the handful of bad trainers? Again, I can't stress enough how much I don't think that bad trainers are the norm. I really don't want to offend anyone here.
The only reason I would want to know if a dog has kidney damage is because it would need to be treated and dogs don't often let us know about internal discomfort. So would it be reasonable to get tests for kidneys or is that done as a part of the normal vet check?
Also I saw someone had adopted a dog with a broken something. Which she was informed about before adopting but it seemed to cause constant pain and be an ongoing problem. I've had various different dogs mostly healthy. One dog had a tumour that he tried to knaw off himself, the poor guy. But I've only once had to nurse a dog and had to watch a couple sadly age away but that is not the situation I want immediately after I get a dog. I was thinking of adopting an older dog, around 4 or 5, so I know I can expect health problems in 3 to 5 years but I want some happy, healthy years first. Especially since my daughter found my last dog's cancer quite traumatic. This time, by the dog starts to suffer health problems they should be in their late teens and early twenties and it will be a different process for them I hope.
So again, it seems like Heather informs any adopters of all health problems she is aware of, which is great. I've looked at a bunch of different agencies and this seems like the best. It's less a racing injury that bothers me than the chance that a dog may (especially if I'm looking at older dogs) have kidney issues. Has anyone had any experience with this?
And also, if a dog is racing until they are 4 or 5, is that any indicator of something? I notice most dogs retire earlier than that. I don't mind a bit younger, I just don't want any puppies. I'm actually quite good at training older dogs and help with friends and their dog issues but I am so done with puppy training. Its kind of like having a new born baby in the house and I'm totally done with that too!
I never had an opinion about racing because I never paid attention to it. I assume that people who handle animals would want the animals to be in the best physical and mental health possible. Of course, this can't always be the case, just look at people who handle children for a living. It usually is a positive and nurturing environment, but sometimes bad things happen.
Recently I read an article on this forum by Dennis Mckeon in which he talks about how nonsensical it would be for handlers and trainers of greyhounds to mistreat dogs. They wouldn't race as well, they would have horrible personalities and they wouldn't be so popular for adoption if they had the physical and mental attributes of abused animals.
Everything he said made perfect sense. In fact it made so much sense, I for the first time, went to Youtube to look at a race. Of course, I found a race and two BBC documentaries about the horrors of greyhound racing. Which I watched.
First of all, I want to say that watching the documentaries did not do anything to falter my faith in Dan McKeon's article. But I can't help but wonder it the atrocities that went on in these documentaries do not go on still, at some level, somewhere. One of the doc's took place in England and Scotland and one took place in Australia. Not in the U.S. where it seems we get most of our retired hounds.
In one, a man went undercover to buy a dog off a trainer. The trainer didn't own the dogs but housed them and trained them and also, bet on them. He was secretly recorded explaining how he could make a large amount of money off bets by "stopping" certain dogs. This means the dogs are drugged so they don't perform as well as they normally would for 4 to 5 races and sometimes be put at a lower level of racing. Then the drugging would stop and the dogs would start winning. The drugs damaged the kidneys of the dogs and it seems the owners didn't know that was happening. The guy was outed and fined something around $300 Australian dollars. But he'd made $30,000 in a month on combined races so it wasn't much of a disciplinary action. There were several greyhound owners that had been suspended repeatedly for doing the opposite, drugging the dogs with cocaine, viagra and other performance drugs so they ran faster. But the suspensions did nothing to stop them because the whole thing was still lucrative.
A system for testing dogs was put in place. But the company in charge of testing the dogs, was owned by the bookies. So that didn't work out.
I also saw a dog get injured in a run, which was awful to see. But less disturbing because all athletes suffer pain and injury sometime. I won't even go in to the amount of dogs destroyed.
Anyway, again this was in the UK and I'm not sure but I suspect these docs were made in the early nineties. The main point they made was that where there is so much money at stake, the money will in the end, always be the most important thing.
As a good example of this take a look at Jon Olivers statements about the NCAA (college basketball). youtu.be/pX8BXH3SJn0
I'm not posting any link to the racing docs I watched because I don't want to seem like I believe that this is happening and we're all being lied to and that I'm some hysterical crazy person. And I don't want to make any accusations about Dennis McKeon's article which I'm sure is accurate and well researched and he obviously has lived in the world of racing.
But I can't help but think there has to be a handful of dirty trainers out there. And from reading the forum I see that not all dogs come into homes with the personalities of a dog that has never been abused. Taking the fact that they are in totally unfamiliar settings in to consideration, it seems like there are dogs who would rather have not that much to do with humans. Again, just a handful, but there they are.
I'm not saying I'm sure these dogs were mishandled, I'm saying I'm unsure they weren't.
My only concerns here are, is there a way to test the health of a dogs kidney, a non evasive way, if one is concerned the dog may have been subject to one of the handful of bad trainers? Again, I can't stress enough how much I don't think that bad trainers are the norm. I really don't want to offend anyone here.
The only reason I would want to know if a dog has kidney damage is because it would need to be treated and dogs don't often let us know about internal discomfort. So would it be reasonable to get tests for kidneys or is that done as a part of the normal vet check?
Also I saw someone had adopted a dog with a broken something. Which she was informed about before adopting but it seemed to cause constant pain and be an ongoing problem. I've had various different dogs mostly healthy. One dog had a tumour that he tried to knaw off himself, the poor guy. But I've only once had to nurse a dog and had to watch a couple sadly age away but that is not the situation I want immediately after I get a dog. I was thinking of adopting an older dog, around 4 or 5, so I know I can expect health problems in 3 to 5 years but I want some happy, healthy years first. Especially since my daughter found my last dog's cancer quite traumatic. This time, by the dog starts to suffer health problems they should be in their late teens and early twenties and it will be a different process for them I hope.
So again, it seems like Heather informs any adopters of all health problems she is aware of, which is great. I've looked at a bunch of different agencies and this seems like the best. It's less a racing injury that bothers me than the chance that a dog may (especially if I'm looking at older dogs) have kidney issues. Has anyone had any experience with this?
And also, if a dog is racing until they are 4 or 5, is that any indicator of something? I notice most dogs retire earlier than that. I don't mind a bit younger, I just don't want any puppies. I'm actually quite good at training older dogs and help with friends and their dog issues but I am so done with puppy training. Its kind of like having a new born baby in the house and I'm totally done with that too!