By Jessica Frank
The first time I really remember being smitten by a greyhound, it was actually a statue. When I was young, I used to watch Wheel of Fortune with my mom and my grandma. If you watched the old original Wheel of Fortune shows, you may remember the little shopping bit people did after each round, in which they took the "money" they won and shopped from a selection of things that were offered by the show. One of those things was a white greyhound statue. No one ever bought it that I recall, but my eyes went to it every time, the graceful neck, the willowy limbs, the fine slender head. Of all the fancy furniture, electronics and vacation trips, I knew what I would have bought if I had won a round on that show - it would have been that statue. Later, when my mom took me to local dog shows, I would gravitate over to those beautiful, stately sighthounds. They captured my fascination and that never died.
Like many people, what I saw about racing was never positive. I saw pictures of starved and abused dogs, heard stories about dogs beaten or put to death in various cruel ways if they didn't win, and it was burned into my brain that dog racing was a horrible thing full of death and cruelty for the dogs. That's why, many years later, when I was part of a big pet online forum and someone asked "Would you go to a dog race?" I answered I would NEVER go to one, I would never support that cruelty. Almost everyone else echoed similar sentiments.
But then someone new came along, an outsider, and he began telling a completely different kind of story, one I had never heard before. Owners and trainers were dedicated to their dogs. The dogs were given the best of the best, and when they retired they certainly were not discarded or killed. I was resistant to that at first. I began pointing out websites, statistics, photos. And very quickly and neatly he pointed out these were outright lies, how laughable the statistics were. He explained how those places had an agenda and it wasn't to save dogs. He then showed me links of his own that told the truth, the REAL statistics. I became more quiet and thoughtful. I watched him patiently continue to address other people's accusations and racing. It doesn't seem like one person, who I did not even know personally, could change a belief that was fed and nurtured for years by TV, the Internet, photos and various other media, but I couldn't deny one thing: What he said just made sense. I had learned long ago about PeTA and HSUS. It wasn't so hard for me to see how AR organizations could be just as fanatical and misleading.
My first feeling was one of relief. I was relieved that those atrocities I thought were happening were mostly fantasy. And then I felt somewhat humiliated. I had bitten the bait they put out; hook, line and sinker. I had believed it for years without ever hearing the other side of the story. And then I felt angry. I had been lied to and used to spread hate and false information. It's something I would be careful not to repeat, from that day forward, about ANY issue. It literally was a life-changing day for me.
From then on, I sought out more information. I found the Grey Talk board and read and browsed everything I could find about greyhounds. This was actually several years before I would adopt my first hound. While I had wanted to for a long time, I either already had a full house or didn't have the choice at the time. In late January 2013, I would finally get my own hound, and I was determined that everyone I would meet would not see this hound as a helpless victim, but a proud dog with a proud history and meticulous upbringing by many people.
sounds very similar to the antics here in Australia by the so called Coalition for the protection of racehorses and the lies they spread about racing
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