What is a bit disturbing to me....and I'm entirely tired of debating the issue.....is when people see the AR propaganda, and hear the voices of political action groups like GPL and Grey2K....and then are appraised of the facts by those of us who have actual empirical knowledge of the breed and years of experience with the breed as professionals....but then somehow come to the conclusion that "the truth is somewhere in the middle".
In fact, the truth is nowhere near "the middle". The truth is that it is patently unreasonable for anyone to assert or assume that the majority of people, who rely upon their greyhounds performances to earn their living, or their families' living, do so by neglecting and abusing their racing greyhounds.
And even more incongruous, to suppose that a sporting industry, which is driven by profit, is rife with inhumane treatment of the creatures whose actual racing performances provide this profit....especially when the difference between a racing greyhound who might earn 50K in a career, and one who might never earn a penny, is about 7/10ths of a second over the course of a 30 second-long race.
There is a cause and effect relationship between the quality of care one affords their greyhounds, and the subsequent racetrack performances of those greyhounds----and the money they can earn.
While some caretakers are more skilled and perceptive than others, the overwhelming majority of them will achieve predictable results from an average kennel of dogs, and provide exceptional care for their racing greyhounds. If they didn't they would soon find themselves unemployed or penniless, or both.
In any profession involving the caretaking of animals, there are always those who fall outside the performance mean----or basic husbandry standards----whether by exceeding or falling below----just as there are racing greyhounds who greatly exceed or fall below the performance mean for the breed.
Sadly, we only hear of the activites of the handful of maladjusted individuals who occasionally abuse or neglect their racing greyhounds, or run afoul of the rules. This makes for sensational storytelling.....but it disgusts true racing professionals even more than it does the public at large.
When the insinuation is further made, that neglect and abuse of highly-bred and finely tuned racing athletes is the norm, and not the abberration----those of us who are racing professionals, and who know that this is not the case, by virtue of decades of experience within the racing profession and with the breed, feel slurred and injured by the accusation. That shouldn't be hard for anyone to understand.
What I think I see here, seems to be a group of people who are speaking out against a "system" which employs racing greyhounds as money-earning athletes. That's fine. Racing isn't for everybody.
What I hope they can learn, is that the vast majority of greyhound professionals they will encounter on these message boards, and/or in their personal lives, are extremely dedicated and well versed handlers and caretakers of racing greyhounds, and unabashed custodians and champions of the racing breed.
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