Born to run from the start,
Chasing bunny around the track,To catch our only goal,
A family to be our pack.
Many of us, as greyhound owners, wonder what our dogs’ young lives were like. Watching them play, we can only imagine how cute and funny they were. They do retain some of their puppy attitudes, but I still wonder how Kiowa’s and Emma’s lives before the track played out. To that end, I did some reading up on greyhound farm life and the beginnings of our dogs lives on the race track.
National Greyhound Association (NGA) puppies are born on farms. They are born in climate-controlled buildings, remain with their mother and siblings, and are handled frequently by their caretakers. After weaning and reaching between 6 to 10 weeks old, the litter moves to an outdoor pen called a “run” where they can play and run with each other. This first run is usually 100 feet long. As they get older and stronger, the runs increase in length to 300 feet, and the breeders are always checking on a dog’s lure enthusiasm. Each puppy is tattooed. The right ear has the puppy’s month and last two digits of its year of birth and a letter indicating the sequence of that dog in the litter. The left ear has their NGA registration number. Greyhound puppies remain with their littermates on the farm for about a year.
Between 4 and 18 months, the dogs are put into individual crates, and during this time their training really begins. Training with a drag lure starts when the puppies are 10 to 12 months old. This is done at a special training facility where they are sent for their formal race education. Here they learn routine, and have paddock turnouts 3 to 4 times a day. The dogs begin by racing in straight lines. They graduate to learning to run in small circles, and finally they are introduced to the schooling track where they learn to break from the box and run with other dogs. Now they are ready for the professional track.
At 18 months, their training completed, they are sent to a track. At that time, they are given six chances to finish in the top four in their maiden race. If they are too slow to take the top four, they are retired, adopted or euthanized. If they succeed, they are graded: A, B, C, D, E, or J. If a greyhound finishes or fails to finish first, second, or third in a number of races that greyhound moves up or down one grade. The best running dogs are sent to more competitive tracks while the ones that don’t win are moved to lower graded tracks. They can move up and down in the grades depending on their performance.
Kennel compounds are located at each track. They are independently-operated and house the greyhounds that are needed to operate that track. Greyhound owners who want to run their dogs are required to lease their dogs to these kennels. The kennel owner and the dog owner share in the greyhound’s earnings.
Our dogs had quite a working life before becoming pets, and they have earned the right to be lazy now. If you have a fenced in yard or take your dog to an enclosed area, you can sometimes see the glint in the eye of your dog a moment before he starts to run in circles or figure eights. Greyhounds run not to win but for the pure joy of it, and we as their companions get to share in that joy.
Resources:
D. Caroline Coile, PH.D, Greyhounds, A Complete Pet Owner’s Manual, New
York: Barron’s, 1996
Dr. Jim Jeffers, GreySave volunteer, Illustrated History of Greyhounds, GreySave.org
Joee Kam, Raising Baby, Celebrating Greyhounds Magazine, Fall, 2014
