Left In Lowell

Two related subjects, which are on the docket for discussion in the Commonwealth. Racinos, and banning greyhound dog racing.

First, there’s the racinos, or slots at race tracks…where the big racing lobby and their allies managed to squeeze out a promise from DiMasi to let it come up for a vote. Though the bill could be DOA for this year, this perennial waste of legislature time will likely come back again.

Racinos are even a worse idea than casinos. For one thing, legalizing slots in the state still opens us up for the federal process for casinos - where the state gets nothing in the deal. Just. Keep. Slots. Out. For heaven’s sake. Second, the race track owners’ claim that there’s thousands of jobs at stake (both existing, and future, should slots pass) is spurious at best. Did I say spurious? I meant outright lies.

Related to racinos is the racing dog tracks issue. The dog track (indeed, most racing in general) is a dying industry, and now they are looking to be propped up with gambling revenues, because they cannot make a living abusing and racing dogs.

And certified to be on the ballot this fall is a total ban on racing dogs itself.

On its face, you wonder how racing greyhounds could be so mistreated if they are supposed to perform to win? After all, if you were stuck in a proportionately small cage and kept there with no exercise for hours and hours a day, would you be able to run a race? (Oh wait, that’s exactly like human Cubical Land!) Except worse. Because dogs can’t choose to quit and walk away from their “cubical,” or get out on their own to do what dogs do - socialize, romp (and greyhounds are sports performance vehicles), and be healthy. The abuses - caging, medicating, starving - are well-documented throughout the country.

And for every winning dog, there are dozens, or hundreds, of others which were not winners. They are largely culled.

My husband’s family once adopted a greyhound who was raced. This was once removed, as they adopted it from the horse farm where it was living after the horse farm had adopted it from the track. I met the dog years after the family took her, and she was not a normal, happy dog. She had anxiety issues even when I knew her. And that was after improving 10-fold from the nervous, anxious behavior that plagued her when they first adopted her. She was an attention-starved creature, to the end of her days…no matter how much time you spent with her or how kind you were, you could never calm her nervousness and neediness completely.

Dogs do need to perform the jobs they were bred to do to be really happy - often a good owner will engage their dog in agility training or rag-racing or obedience training, digging and tunneling or herding. But greyhound racing is a business, and similar to the big milk farms where cows are overmedicated, fed hormones and kept in terrible conditions, dogs in greyhound racing are similarly mistreated, injured, and become physically and psychologically damaged animals, all in the name of profit.

We should judge our own race by the way we treat those whose lives we control. Should we look into the mistreatment of horses in racing? Or domestic animals being raised for meat or milk? Absolutely. But dog racing has no virtues and produces nothing, only vice - gambling, and abuse.

I will vote for the ban in November, and encourage you to do the same. Unless you aren’t human, you can’t help but be moved by pictures like these. This is what a happy greyhound looks like. Let’s ensure that all greyhounds are bred for loving homes, not gambling profit.