The Good, the Bad and the Ugly 

I had an email last week from a veterinary friend from Queensland.  I met him on two of the three trips I made to Australia after I retired during the nineties.  His name was John Murray.  I stayed with him and his partner Beverley Behm and I enjoyed their wonderful hospitality.  I had hoped that they would come to Yorkshire so that I could return their kindness.  It was not to be.  Poor Beverley died after a long and painful illness.  She had a way with greyhounds and trained many winners -- she is much missed.

I had been itching to go there for over forty years.  Jane and I wanted to go when we got married but our parents were not happy about losing us.  When we finally planned to go I was disappointed to be going alone.  Jane did not fancy the itinerary.  I also got a refusal from a few freinds who were interested in greyhounds.  For my first journey I was lucky to find the company of a dear friend called John McConnell.   He had a partner from Inishowen called Hugh Gill whose son Patrick is a close mate of our Warwick.  Together  John and Hugh had established a big business called Modern Plant Hire in Rugby.  John was a brave man to venture in my car on the 6,000 miles through Victoria and New South Wales with stops along the way wherever there was a greyhound track.  My interest in them was that in addition to their size and their sand surfaces they had other safety factors that reduced the injury rate associated with racing here.

When the sport was introduced there in a number of areas racing was staged over straight courses where injuries were virtually unknown.  Of all the those I visited I got most satisfaction from seeing racing on the lovely flat straights of Appin, Capalaba, Healesville, Kalpura, Wentworth and Wyong.  On all of those six I saw dogs weighing eighty pounds or more.  When I examined them many of them were completely sound showing no evidence of injury.  On British or Irish tracks I found a high incidents of injury in greyhounds weighing more than seventy pounds.  I have written many articles suggesting that breeders should have a financial incentive to breed from bitches weighing less than sixty pounds.  There was ample proof to support my views sixty years ago.  Many of the champion dogs under sixty five pounds and bitches under fifty five had long careers in the highest class.

The Aussies had a big country and consequently they were able to provide safer turns on their conventually shaped tracks than we could here in crowded Britain.  They were also able to have large circular tracks without any turn at all.

As a student in Dublin I thought that the Brits were mad about dogs.  When I first came to Britain after the war there were many Irish trainers and kennel men living with the dogs at the track kennels.  Their wages were painfully low. They were there because of their love for the dogs.  I was surprised to see that few others were concerned about the injured.  At the majority of venues there was no veterinary cover.  The injured were treated or put to sleep by the senior trainers.  When the going was dangerous in very cold or wet weather the greyhounds had to race.  A trainer who withdrew a runner out of concern for its welfare risked a servere penalty or dismissal without notice.  One of the kindest trainers I ever worked for was Charlie Lister OBE.  I often saw the tears of him and his late wife Valerie when they had one injured.  One evening in 2001when Charlie had two injured at Milton Keynes he was so upset that he withdrew two others.  The NGRC showed their sympathy by robbing him of £500.  

At tracks where a vet was employed he/she did not have the authority to cancel the meeting.  I learnt this when employed at my local track in freezing fog one evening  in 1957.  The hare driver could not see sufficiently to keep it at a safe distance in front of the runners and some of them sustained injuries to their legs.  For the next race he tied a flash lamp to the hare.  When that fell off the greyhounds again overtook it and only then was racing abandoned.  I reported the incident to the stipendiary steward - an ex Colonel.  All that happened was that the secretary of the NGRC was invited out for a meal by the promoter -- and I got the sack.

At that time I was na-ive enough to think that all of us would abide by our oath to give priority to the welfare of our patients.   The nearest vet  to me telephoned that he had taken my job because he could not leave the track without veterinary cover.    I thanked him for enlightening me because I knew some who took jobs because the salary enabled them to employ an extra colleague.    I was always in favour of a vet being employed at tracks and having authority to pass the surface as safe.   The NGRC did not insist on any such rule before '90.  They just did not have the power.

There used to be over two hundred tracks in Britain and the majority were independent.  In the early years of the sport the Greyhound Express covered the racing at Hackney independent track as well as that at all the NGRC tracks.  The NGRC threatened the Editor that they would withhold their programmes if he was to continue covering any independents.  Consequently all these had to stuggle to operate at a gross disadvantage.