When is a Greyhound Like Pizza?

This weekend’s Palm Beach Post featured an article by Craig Dolch entitled, "Kennel Operator Enjoys Runaway Success" and glorifies the sport as a business, not revealing one negative aspect of it and even brushing over a potential negative and turning it into a positive (or at least a neutral).

Let’s deconstruct:

• 50-year old Norm Rader owned pizza restaurants in Colorado. For fun, I suppose, he went to the local track to bet on the greyhounds.
• In 1984 he bought a greyhound for $7,500 and named him after a pizza (NR’s Meateater). Clearly, he didn’t purchase the dog because he was cute or because he wanted to give him a loving home. He wanted to make money from the dog, just like he made money from pizza. The only problem is that pizza isn’t a sentient being and might actually have an interest in not being owned by him, muzzled and kenneled most of the time, and forced to race.
• When NR’s Meateater, which by the way is a repulsive name, won enough to return the cost of Rader’s investment, he "got more serious about dog racing." He being Rader, as the dogs don’t get any kind of positive return on their forced-investment (which technically is servitude and not an investment at all).
• By 2000, Rader owned more than 50 dogs, and now he owns far more and his dogs win a lot of races.
  • "It’s been a dream, like living in fantasy land," Rader said of his torrid run. "I believe that most businesses are roller coasters with a lot of peaks and valleys. Right now, I’m on a peak. But I think a lot of guys can stay on that peak longer than others." Notice the absence of a thought regarding the dogs.

• Rader runs his kennel with his wife.
  • "While most trainers keep their ‘active list’ (the list of available dogs) fairly constant, Rader could install a revolving door on his kennel.
             He brings in several hundred dogs every meeting from all over the U.S., giving them a short time to show whether they can run on PBKC’s sprint-favoring surface.
             If a greyhound struggles in his first few starts, Rader quickly sends that dog to another track and brings in another to take his place. He repeats that process over and over again." Ah, the life of a Rader, dog. Makes you wanna trade places with one, doesn’t it? The love they have for the dogs and the appreciation for their servitude is just heartwarming!

• Wait, then he actually says it: "I’m not a dogman," he says. "I’m a businessman who runs a dog kennel. I’m not going to tell you I’m the best at training a dog or finding an injury on a dog. But I’m a darn good businessman and I have a really good eye for watching dog races. That comes from many years of losing bets on the dogs. I’ve paid my dues."

Mr. Rader: What happens when your investments no longer pay you? How are they "discarded?" How many have you "discarded"? How many are "culled" as puppies? How are they transported? (Hint: Usually in non-air conditioned trailers, where many perish each year.) There’s a reason why greyhound racing is legal in only a dozen or so states: it’s a cruel, barbaric form of gambling and "entertainment." Thousands of dogs are killed each year, and far more injured and/or maimed.

Greyhounds aren’t pizzas. You don’t throw them away and start over with a new one if you don’t like the one you’ve bought. When you take on the life of an animal, in my mind you are morally obligated to do what’s best for that animal and care for him for his entire life.

Go to Grey2K USA to learn more about this hideous "sport," and write the Palm Beach Post, and tell them how you feel about glorifying greyhound racing.

Here’s what I wrote:

Regarding Craig Dolch’s "Kennel Operator Enjoys Runaway Success," as a person who has adopted several greyhounds from the track, I am appalled by the way you glorified Mr. Rader. Greyhounds aren’t like pizzas. If you don’t like the dog you’ve bought, you shouldn’t discard him and order a new one. Yet that’s what Mr. Rader does. It may be a "fantasyland" for him, but it’s not for the dogs, whom he doesn’t even claim to care about. Greyhounds are killed by the thousands each year because they are no longer profitable, and far more puppies are "culled" when they don’t prove promising. Racers are transported in woefully inadequate, unsafe manners, and their lives of servitude–kenneled and muzzled most of the time–are tragic. It’s time Florida joins the majority of the country in realizing that greyhound racing is no way to treat man’s best friend.

Mary Martin, Ph.D., Jupiter, FL