Famous Last Words

By Dennis McKeon

"I know their idiosyncrasies… what toys they like, what beds they prefer, the sounds they make…how they're feeling at any given moment. That's a connection you simply can't have with a greyhound you have never even met"

The above quote was offered, several years ago, by a board member of a certain anti-racing lobbying group, referring to his own companion dogs. He made it while arguing that a certain Greyhound owner could not possibly love a Greyhound she had never met.

He was citing a Greyhound she had paid to acquire and to raise, and who would come to live with her once the dog’s racing career (and potential breeding career) was finished.

Now, aside from his statement implying an uncanny ability to see into another’s heart, or to read their mind, it also implies that absent personal contact or knowledge of any dog, one cannot possibly know or truly connect with that dog---or, presumably, with a breed or a population of dogs.

The infamous group he represents, purports to love and care about all Greyhounds, and is one whose agenda and activism is based upon their apparently psychic abilities to intuit the feelings of all Greyhounds, toward their occupation of racing.

Since these people are about as far removed from the lives of those Greyhounds, as you and I are from lives of Geishas in 18th century Japan, I found his statement quite remarkable.

Here we had the spokesperson for a group which has accepted multiple millions in public donations, which portrays itself as the voice of Greyhounds who cannot speak for themselves, admitting that he and his group were complete frauds.

As he explained:

"I know their idiosyncracies…what toys they like, what beds they prefer, the sounds they make…how they're feeling at any given moment. That's a connection you simply can't have with a greyhound you have never even met."

Of course, that is precisely what thousands of Greyhound racing professionals, who care for these dogs 24/7, and who know them intimately, have been trying to tell him and his ilk for decades-- while they portray happy, perfectly content and fulfilled racing Greyhound athletes, as wretched and pathetic objects of pity.

So when you read the press releases, or their begging letters, where they bemoan racing Greyhounds as horribly abused, tragically neglected, pitifully unhappy victims of human ego and avarice--despite their utter disconnection from those woeful creatures--consider the source, and keep this in mind:

“That's a connection you simply can't have with a greyhound you have never even met.”

Truer words were never spoken.

copyright, 2016