Injuries - RockingshipSpeak

[rockingship]

Dennis:


I agree with your assessment that there are many variables involved, and this is a difficult question to answer.

However, what is disappointing is that after adding so much good information to the conversation, you again fall back on the two models that are least reliable and even ridiculous:

1. Suggesting that because the odds of a dog being injured in any particular race are slim, there is no significant danger involved in a dog racing over and over again.

Carey....tihs is a pretty simple concept. The injury statistics are relative to and inclusive of the sum total of each individual racing performance by each individual dog----whether the dog raced 50 times, 30 times or 5 times. So the exponential effect of racing over a period of time is already part and parcel of those figures.

At NH tracks, those figures indicated 1 injury per every 140 individual racing events in 2005. Period. We do not know the exact number of greyhounds who comprised the entire racing population that year in the state, so we cannot extrapolate any more precise information than we have already done----1 injury in 140 events----with the existing data----which includes dogs with dozens of performances and dogs with a minimal number of performances.

It would be wonderful if we could come up with a computer program to assess all the variables that might predispose a greyhound to injury, and thus do a better job at preventing injuries.....but that is one of the reasons breeders use racing as a tool for selectivity in the first place. Racing is the proving grounds for applied breed genetics. The vast majority of the population which is selected for breeding purposes, are greyhounds who raced successfully at a relatively high level of performance, for a relatively long period of time, and with a minimum of unsoundness.

2. That it is appropriate to determine the likelihood of injury by comparing the number of total injuries to the number of dogs that raced at a particular facility in any given year. This is fatally flawed because it gives equal weight to a dog that raced once and a dog that raced fifty times.

Quite frankly, the denial that you demonstrate in researching this so carefully, and then falling back on the two most flawed models, is pretty impressive.

Please see above.

Your refusal and inability to come to grips with the fact that accidental injury is not the exclusive realm of the racing greyhound is beyond impressive, and bordering on psychosis.

[ctheil]

Dennis:

What's beautiful about our democratic process is that voters are usually smarter than people give them credit for.

This conversation is a good example of that. I believe that voters will understand that the more a greyhound races, the more likely they are to be injured. I also believe that voters will see broken ankles and other similar injuries as serious.

Further, I'm pretty sure they will see your rationalizations as rather callous.

Yours,
Carey

[rockingship]

I'm pretty sure that if the voters realized that your "final solution" to all things greyhound is the virtual liquidation of the racing greyhound as a functional and viable population of dogs, they'd do the right thing. But that's another thing about our democratic process----even charlatans like you, if they are skillful and clever-----and that you are, sir---- can make a nice living conning the public and purveying your sick prejudices as concern.

[ctheil]

Dennis:

I understand why these personal attacks are tempting. This is the last remaining defense you have in attempting to prolong this animal cruelty, and you are going to lose on the merits of the issue.

But don't bet on this strategy working. Voters are smarter than you think.

Yours,
Carey

[hounddog]

ctheil said:

Dennis:

What's beautiful about our democratic process is that voters are usually smarter than people give them credit for.

This conversation is a good example of that. I believe that voters will understand that the more a greyhound races, the more likely they are to be injured. I also believe that voters will see broken ankles and other similar injuries as serious.

Further, I'm pretty sure they will see your rationalizations as rather callous.

Yours,
Carey

I think this is a correct assumption.

[rockingship]

No Carey....we are going to lose because you hid from the voters, the section of the bill that bans greyhound racing. You know that and I know that. Heck, it was the smart move. You lost on the merits of the issue only a few years ago, and you'd lose again...but you're a very bright guy, a real politician, and you figured out a way to fool the voters. .

[rockingship]

hounddog said:

ctheil said:

Dennis:

What's beautiful about our democratic process is that voters are usually smarter than people give them credit for.

This conversation is a good example of that. I believe that voters will understand that the more a greyhound races, the more likely they are to be injured. I also believe that voters will see broken ankles and other similar injuries as serious.

Further, I'm pretty sure they will see your rationalizations as rather callous.

Yours,
Carey

I think this is a correct assumption.

And I think that working towards the extinction of the racing greyhound pretty much defines "callous". Not to mention the surreptitious elimination of about 2000 jobs.

[hounddog]

rockingship said:

No Carey....we are going to lose because you hid from the voters, the section of the bill that bans greyhound racing. You know that and I know that. Heck, it was the smart move. You lost on the merits of the issue only a few years ago, and you'd lose again...but you're a very bright guy, a real politician, and you figured out a way to fool the voters. .

I think what you narrowly won a few years ago was the voters endosement of maintaining a tax revenue source from the tracks and the jobs supporting it. If a vote was taken on the positive or negative view the voter has on racing greyhounds, I think you would lose every time.
With expanded gaming opportunities, new revenue sources and new jobs most likely will replace those lost in this industry.

[rockingship]

I think what you narrowly won a few years ago was the voters endosement of maintaining a tax revenue source from the tracks and the jobs supporting it. If a vote was taken on the positive or negative view the voter has on racing greyhounds, I think you would lose every time.

Oh really?.....then why is the portion of the DPA that concerns greyhound racing hidden? Why not just let the voters decide, without the prevarication and obfuscation? If Carey is so sure of himself, then there is no reason to flim-flam the voters.

If each voter in Ma could spend a week or even a day in a racing kennel, they'd run Grey2K out of the state on a rail.

[hounddog]

rockingship said:

I think what you narrowly won a few years ago was the voters endosement of maintaining a tax revenue source from the tracks and the jobs supporting it. If a vote was taken on the positive or negative view the voter has on racing greyhounds, I think you would lose every time.

Oh really?.....then why is the portion of the DPA that concerns greyhound racing hidden? Why not just let the voters decide, without the prevarication and obfuscation? If Carey is so sure of himself, then there is no reason to flim-flam the voters.

If each voter in Ma could spend a week or even a day in a racing kennel, they'd run Grey2K out of the state on a rail.

That's a novel idea Rock but I doubt the average voter in Mass could give two hoots about visiting a greyhound kennel. What they do care about is the notion that they have that a dog, man's best friend, may be exploited and abused for profit.; Right or wrong that is the prevailing notion, I believe.

[rockingship]

I respectfully disagree. I believe the prevailing notion is to live and let live, and to regard dogs as dogs, and racing dogs as racing dogs.

[hounddog]

rockingship said:

I respectfully disagree. I believe the prevailing notion is to live and let live, and to regard dogs as dogs, and racing dogs as racing dogs.

That's where I disagree. I think this argument could have been shaped in favor of racing had the "industry" taken up the welfare of the dogs as the # one priority. People see dogs as their pets. The public relations and the repeated failures of the industry to police and rid itself of abuse has left most average people with a bad feeling towards greyhound racing.

[rockingship]

Houndog....formal adoption in MA was begun, circa 1982, by the late and lamented Joan Dillon, who was a racing greyhound owner.

I know this because I raised a litter of dogs for her, and counted her among my friends. She began adopting dogs out of her home, and not long afterwards formed the first REGAP in MA, which was the second REGAP in the country. MA REGAP's first president was to later be the owner/breeder of the 1985 Wonderland Derby winner......the first REGAP in the US, was in FL, having been started a year or so earlier, again by racing greyhound professionals. The first formal adoption program in the country was begun by Edward Keelan, GM at Seabrook, circa 1979-80. Shortly afterwards there were also track run adoption kennels, on site, at Hinsdale and Plainfield.

The New England Greyhound Association (a racing kennel association) was an enthusiastic supporter of adoption, and not only helped fund the early programs, but ran a monthly column on adoption in their publication "Turnout Magazine", which began in 1979, featuring Gee Lebon's m onthly adoption column. They ran and funded "meet the greyhounds" nights at the Revere track, and were trying and beginning to identify an audience for retired racing greyhounds, at a time when there was none, aside from sharecroppers and hobbyist coursers.

The anti-racing industry, at this time, was trying to have the coursing of live game outlawed, and the thrust of their national and regional propaganda at that time, was that racing greyhounds were "vicious (they wear muzzles, don't they?)"....and "trained to kill". So their jackrabbit advocacy was at the expense of the reputation of the racing greyhound, and the efforts of those racing professionals who were hoping to pioneer the concept of adoption, and to find an audience for retired racers.

At the time, the then president of the HSUS, in an interview with Turnout Magazine, said that the HSUS was not against the humane euthanasia of retired racers, but was indeed concerned about the possibility that thousands of greyhounds might be "warehoused" for indeterminate periods of time, while awaiting adoption.

The jackrabbit advocacy succeeded, but not without casting serious doubts in the mind of the public about the nature of the racing greyhound, and its suitability as a family pet. I'd venture to say it set comprehensive adoption back nearly a decade.

[hounddog]

Rock, I understand all of that, and it makes a nice retort to the AR crowd but we are dealing in the here and now and in a national scope and with everyday average citizens who quite frankly could care less about how we got here. You have no organization to combat the mounting opinion that there is no need to race greyhounds especially if their welfare is in question.

[rockingship]

Yes, you are right about that.....so what does that say about the (mythological) megalithical "racing industry"?