From the Washington Post

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Date: August 19, 2018 at 4:10:48 PM CDT

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Note that I do not take a position pro or con regarding racing. The link above provides information you may well want to know.

What interests me is that if racing is ultimately banned in Florida, there may be a huge surge of greyhounds for adoption in the short term. Many involved with greyhound adoption prepared for this possibility when previous Florida legislation was pending a few years ago. Over the longer term - if there is less breeding - the greyhound population in North America may decline significantly.

Economically, greyhound racings years may be numbered in the U.S. Even in states where racing was not banned, declining public interest in betting on live racing of any kind has led to the closure of dozens of tracks in the past two decades. The legalization of casino gambling in many states - with the prospect of instant rewards for betting - has attracted gamblers who dont have the patience to place their bets and wait even a few minutes for the outcome.

Most states have not "banned" grey racing. They have simply not authorised it or have not approved betting on it. Wash Post is wrong, too.

Greyhounds is the ultimate instant reward format & the reason why greyhounds betting/turnover is growing here, whilst the trots & thoroughbreds are at best, treading water ...the dogs is over in 30 secs (few minutes?, its more like secs), money in, money out,for the punter, like the slots ...& there are many betting formats to lure punters .....I think greyhound states/clubs in USA need to grab hold of their product & resell it/change concept/change advertising...maybe reverse engineer success model/s like the state of Victoria, here ....

Cheers

Wayne which states have banned racing ? I keep hearing that racing is banned in 48 states but as I understand it racing is legal in all US states other than one or two what is banned in those states is betting on racing and in fact betting on anything .. which in turn has created an $500B illegal gambling industry that operates out of Costa Rica, is run by organised crime and with no returns going back to the states coffers and 86% of Americans have bet illegally

Also if racing is on the decline it is due to the model .. in Victoria alone the last annual turnover was $900m - a rise of 4% from last year and our market share has risen from 10% to 21% in the last twenty years. A big part of greyhound racings demise in the US is the privately owned tracks trying to run down racing as theres more profit to be made in slot machines

The current Wikipedia article at the following link provides a fairly current status of U.S. greyhound racing, including a state-by state map indicating that 27 states and the District of Columbia do not authorize greyhound racing.

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In what respects is the Washington Post wrong? Any specifics will be helpful.

Lastly, I hope you'll recognize that I'm looking to argue. One more time, I take no position on racing one way or the other. Please don't "kill the messenger." I was merely passing along information that you and other may not otherwise have known about.

As to the Australian model, I think there are wide cultural differences between your country and the U.S, regarding gambling. Slots offer near-instant returns. Gamblers here aren't much interested anymore in seeing greyhounds race as a sport. Most of them here today aren't interested in making a bet and waiting 10 minutes for the outcome.

At most Florida tracks today, racing survives as a money loser. Track operators are forced by law to offer racing to keep their casino licenses, where they make their money. You're right in that this is a profit issue. Up to this point, state law has saved greyhound racing in Florida.

The disappearance of tracks in many states over the past two decades is due to one hard reality - economics. The market has disappeared and you can't force people back to the tracks.

Racing is dying in the US because of the model Americans arent any different to Aussies much of the illegal betting in the US is on football where they wait a lot longer than 10 minutes for a result

Forget Wikipedia anyone can edit Wikipedia and that is what G2K does. Look at the bibliography and you will see references there to G2K. No one in their right mind is going to G2K to find out about greyhound racing.

Greyhound racing is illegal in one state, Idaho. However, Idaho didn't ban greyhound racing they banned all canine racing. A couple of years ago someone wanted to do a charity race with, dachshunds I think, and they were told no because it was illegal.

G2K bans pari-mutuel wagering on the dogs live, but not the racing.

You need to get off the fence and join our side because while we want you if you are not with us then you are against us. Being in the middle is never a good place to be. If you stand in the middle of a battlefield both sides will shoot at you, so come join our side.

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The Florida Supreme Court will hear the case to throw the question off the ballot on August 29th. We won in the trial court and both sides agreed to pass the appeals court and go right to the FSC because that is where this was going one way or the other.

If we lose in the FSC the ballot question needs 60 percent of the vote on November 6th and we will fight right to the end.

Thanks, but I'll sit this one out from here on. I can't vote on this since I don't live in Florida, and probably wouldn't cast a vote on it if I did.

And no, I don't think both sides will shoot at me. Only the Florida nut jobs who carry around assault rifles and mow down high school kids going to Parkland. I hope you're not of that philosophy.

All I care about is seeing that the greyhounds on this earth find good forever homes when their racing days have ended. Why isn't that enough for you?

I think you're right that the map should properly be labeled "commercial racing," because association-based lure coursing and oval track racing has a significant following in the U.S. for both greyhounds and other sighthound breeds. Here's an example:

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In fact, I hope to attend the event in Medina, Ohio on September 29-30, not only to see greyhounds, but also because we want to become more familiar with other sighthound breeds, especially silken windhounds. Ohio does not have commercial tracks, although it has one of the nation's premier veterinary teaching schools with a leading reputation for research into greyhound wellness. The nearest betting track is in West Virginia.

No one is going to shoot at you, that was a metaphor that I guess you didn't get. Both sides will go after you for not being on their side.

Getting greyhounds into adoption is a top priority and that is what made me do the research into this paper.

2014 Greyhound Adoption Rate

In my quest to get a more accurate greyhound adoption rate I decided to concentrate on one year and for no particular reason I chose 2014. I had a few rules that I wanted to follow and they were get as much accurate information as possible and while some numbers would have to be estimated to get as accurate an estimate as possible.

We see the number 20,000 greyhounds killed a year used a lot. That is an estimate based on fantasy and driven by getting donations. Since I'm not looking for donations I will let the numbers fall where they may.

According to the Greyhound Review there were 10,673 pups whelped in 2014. I also know 6885 pups whelped in 2014 ran at least 1 maiden race, thanks to Chris Molnar for that information.

I now had to figure out a mortality rate of the 10,673 pups at tattoo. Tattoo is at 3 months of age. In the wild the mortality rate is well over 20 percent, but purebred dogs have a better rate than that. I checked some purebred sites and talked to some greyhound people and the best estimate I can come up with is 14%. This would include stillborn, some pups die a few hours, days or weeks after birth for various reasons, such as the runt of the litter isn't strong enough or the mother suffocates them. These pups, or any animal's young, have no immune system and things that kill the young before three or four months of age wouldn't kill them a little later in life as their immune system develops.

Using the 14% mortality rate I had a base number of 9178 to start with.

There are dogs that run official schooling races, but are not fast enough to make it into a maiden race and those dogs aren't included in the 6885. I know Greyhound-Data, G-D, doesn't include schooling races, but Trackinfo does.

I now started entering sires, from the top sires in the Greyhound Review, into G-D. If you click on the offspring of a sire you can then click date of birth and G-D will arrange the offspring by date of birth. This allowed me to have all the 2014 pups by that sire in a row. On the right of the offspring page G-D shows how many races each offspring ran. Any offspring with zero I entered into Trackinfo to see if this pup ran any schooling races.

I set up a database with the sires name and a column for "yes ran schooling race' and a column for "no schooling race". I also had a column for no, but adopted.

There are about 110 U.S. adoption groups, out of 350 or more, registered on G-D. G-D allows these groups to put a live link in red that the pup is either up for adoption or has been adopted.

Like this.

CLICK HERE
I would click the pups name on G-D and if it showed he or she was adopted I recorded that in my database. While less than 1/3 of the adoption groups are registered with G-D I could positively account for those dogs.

Between the "top sires" and other sires from the breeding list in the Greyhound Review I found 234 different sires that had at least 1 litter in 2014 and also had at least 1 pup that ran either no races or schooling races, but not a maiden race.

I found 1927 pups with no races. Of those pups 1371 had no schooling races and 556 did run schooling, but not a maiden race. Of the 1371 pups with no schooling races 454 were adopted by those 110 adoption groups on G-D.

I now have accounted for 6885 pups that ran at least a maiden race, 556 that ran at least a schooling race and another 454 that had a registered name and were adopted.

That is a total of 7895.

I then contacted a big adoption group in the Midwest and found out they adopted 31 tattooed, but unnamed pups and I found out 12 more unnamed pups were adopted from three other groups. .

This brought the total up to 7938

I also know about 130 dogs die per year in Florida on track grounds. These 130 dogs didn't all die racing since the death has to be reported if a dog dies anywhere on track grounds. Any dog that dies from sickness or disease, such as cancer, is recorded in that number. Since Florida has just over 2/3rds of the tracks in the U.S. I estimated 65 dogs died at the tracks not in Florida.

Once at the track there are only a few options for the dog. The dog either died on track grounds, and we know that number is 195, they were adopted, the dog was sent back to the farm for breeding or in a small number of cases the owner gave the dog away as a pet to someone.

I had a base number of 9179 to start and 7938 pups I can account for. However, I still have the difference between 9179 and 7938, which is 1241, to account for. I know 195 of these dogs died on track grounds so there are 1046 still unaccounted for.

At this point the adoption/back to farm rate is 84.4% It would probably be reasonable to use the 84% on the 1046 pups not accounted for, but I will err on the low side and use 70%. That number is another 732 pups adopted for a total of 8670.

That is an adoption/back to the farm rate of 94.4%

I know some people like to question the "back to the farm" pups so I did a little research on that. I need to point out this is NOT for the year 2014 it is just the number of pups "back at the farm" in one copy of the Greyhound Review. This is not part of the 2014 rate.

Looking at the 2017 Summer Greyhound Review there are 150 different sires in the breeding report. Some of those sires have died and only frozen semen is available and other younger sires had semen collected and were adopted out. If I guess 30 percent of those sires are not at a farm that would leave 105 that are. But, for every single breeding there has to be a different dam and there were 525 different dams in the 2017 Summer Review. Since 6 months is a normal cycle to go into season again none of these dams will be bred again when the next review comes out in three months and there will be over 500 different dams again. Never underestimate the number of pups sent back to the farm for breeding.

This is 2017 not 1977. What was in 1977, isn't in 2017. Drive around your city or town there is a good chance you will see someone walking a greyhound. If you go to a dog park there is a good chance you will see a greyhound. Those sightings are because adoption is important to the greyhound farms and race tracks. Those sightings are because of all the hard work done by the many adoption groups throughout the U.S. and Canada. These adoption groups work tirelessly to both move and adopt dogs.

Support your local greyhound adoption group with a donation or gift card to a local supermarket or better yet become part of the cult.

Adopt a greyhound.

Dick Ciampa

Copyright 2017

Lara Trump, Erik's wife Dennis McKeon Needs no introduction

Christine Dorchak Steve Sarras kennel owner

Carey Theil A J Grant Trainer

We also have the support of 81 greyhound adoption groups and growing.

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So the question is who do you believe?

The yes side has endorsements from people with no connection to greyhound racing and no one knows the exact question these place were asked. If the question was do you support inhumane treatment of animals the answer is obvious.

Thanks for your comments. You have every right to your beliefs and youve clearly put a lot of effort into your responses. I still neither support nor oppose your political efforts.

But I dont believe the truthfulness of the link you just cited, after seeing the list of adoption groups, I called the director of one of them whom I know well. The groups presence on the list didnt make sense, because the group has always avoided taking a stance. The director specifically disavowed any group endorsement of the Greyhound Adopter for Racing position on the current Florida measure.

At the same time, the director said that the worst cases of greyhound abuse have come from a few greyhound adopting families, who, despite an agencys prior family checks, have neglected or mistreated their dogs. We all accept that people who really love greyhounds, whether in racing or in adopting, dont do things like that.

Thanks for your comments. You have every right to your beliefs and youve clearly put a lot of effort into your responses. I still neither support nor oppose your political efforts.

But I dont believe the truthfulness of the link you just cited, after seeing the list of adoption groups, I called the director of one of them whom I know well. The groups presence on the list didnt make sense, because the group has always avoided taking a stance. The director specifically disavowed any group endorsement of the Greyhound Adopter for Racing position on the current Florida measure.

At the same time, the director said that the worst cases of greyhound abuse have come from a few greyhound adopting families, who, despite an agencys prior family checks, have neglected or mistreated their dogs. We all accept that people who really love greyhounds, whether in racing or in adopting, dont do things like that.

No answer? Maybe I can help you. If it is Greyhound Alliance they have the okay from them.

Plus, the director is the top person in the group you are talking about?