Greyhound racing gets an unusual proponent
Adoption groups start pro-racing coalition
Beyond a guard house and barbed-wire fence in Longwood, Kathy Ford drives down a lane between small concrete-block buildings where racing greyhounds live. She stops at a familiar kennel and enters with biscuits in tow.
“Well, hello, pretty girl!” she says to a small female. She unlocks a latch and the dog jumps out. “Your mommy told me to make sure I give you treats.”
Ford, who founded a greyhound adoption group nearly a decade ago, makes the rounds, rubbing ears and scratching backsides, until she has greeted Spike, Maddie, Lucky, Swiftly, Thunder — and a dozen more. But she isn’t here for just a friendly visit.
As the battle over the future of greyhound racing in Florida appears headed to the November ballot, this retired office manager from Oviedo has become an ambassador of sorts, hoping to convince the public that the controversial industry promotes elite breeding and allows the dogs to do something they love. The effort has made for what might seem like a strange liaison: Ford’s nonprofit, ACT Greyhounds Inc., is one of 77 grey-
hound adoption groups worldwide that have joined forces since June to declare themselves pro-racing.
They insist that their union, Greyhound Adopters for Racing, is a grassroots coalition that gets no money or direction from the dog track industry.
“Greyhound adoption groups, volunteers and adopters actually know and love the dogs,” writes cofounder Jennifer Ng, a Columbia, S.C., veterinarian who says she once held a “somewhat negative impression” of the sport but changed her views after she started volunteering with greyhounds. “I now fully support greyhound racing.”
Though some adoption groups have spoken out previously on behalf of racing, many have — until now — remained silent, at least publicly. Some critics say the groups have been forced to keep quiet or risk being cut off from the pipeline of retired racers and that they’re ignoring the deaths of nearly 500 racing greyhounds in Florida since 2013.
Carey Theil, executive director of GREY2K USA Worldwide, based in Massachusetts, says it’s a “bizarre last-ditch campaign” to defeat Amendment 13, which would ban betting on dog racing in Florida, home to 11 of the nation’s 16 remaining dog tracks. Although a judge ordered the measure removed from the ballot in an Aug. 1 ruling — calling the language “misleading and inaccurate and incomplete” — an appeal Aug. 2 stayed that ruling.
It’s now scheduled to go before the Florida Supreme Court Aug. 29.
“It is true that the greyhound adoption community, at the 11th hour, has largely come to the industry’s defense,” Theil says. “And as an animal advocate and a greyhound adopter myself, I find that strange. I am not attacking these groups — they’re obviously still doing amazing work — but given the long hours these dogs are kept in cages, the rancid meat they’re given, the number of injuries and deaths they suffer, if somebody thinks that’s treating a dog well, I just can’t relate to that.”
Clearly the “Protect Dogs — Yes on 13” campaign has a financial advantage. With money and guidance from Grey2K and the Humane Society of the United States, Protect Dogs had raised over $2.1 million by Aug. 10. The Committee to Support Greyhounds, which opposes the amendment, had raised roughly $51,000.
There’s no love lost between the two sides.
“They’ve called me filthy names,” Ford says. “They’ve harassed us, and they’ve tried to block us” in transporting the dogs for adoption.
But Sonia Stratemann, a Palm Beach County resident who spent 15 years rescuing racing greyhounds and finding them new homes, says the industry’s supporters have been just as ugly to her.
Last November, she says, after she spoke out against racing, she was vilified on social media and her Elite Greyhound Adoptions group was banned from taking in dogs retired from the tracks — though she says she was spending thousands of dollars a year of her own money covering veterinary bills and food.
“When you work with the industry, you’re never supposed to talk publicly about any injuries at the track,” Stratemann says. “You’re never even supposed to use the word ‘rescue.’ I had kept my mouth shut for years, but as soon as I spoke up, they attacked me, and they brought my son into it” — a 17-year-old killed in February 2017 while playing polo.
She — like Ford — says she has helped more than 2,000 greyhounds get adopted over the years. And IRS records show neither of them has made much, if any, money from it.
Both also ended up keeping more than a few as pets.
“We got our first greyhound 20-some years ago as a pet, and we really loved the breed,” Ford says. “And then my husband said that dog needed to have a friend, so we adopted another one. And then my husband said he wanted us to get a racer, and I said, ‘I don’t know. You hear all these things …’”
Ford spent time on an Ocala greyhound farm to learn about the lives of racers, she says, before she was persuaded to buy one. And when the dog broke its leg during a race in Palm Beach, she helped to nurse it through rehabilitation and a return to racing before retiring to their home.
“Injuries do happen sometimes, but they happen off the track, too,” she says. “These dogs love to run and they love to race. I would never support racing if I thought these dogs were being mistreated.”
She laughs at the idea that she has to censor herself in order to receive dogs for adoption.
“Nobody tells me what to say,” she says.
She keeps emails and snapshots from the owners who have adopted her dogs, displaying a gallery of greyhounds curled up on sofas, wearing costumes and romping in backyards.
It is much like the online gallery posted by the Pet Alliance of Greater Orlando — one of the all-breed adoption groups that opposes racing.
“It’s a pretty simple issue for us,” says executive director Stephen Bardy. “We think dogs deserve to live in a home, with human companionship, and not have to work for a living. They should just be your companion, your walking buddy, your TVbinge-watching buddy, your yoga buddy, whatever. Dogs should just live in homes and have people who love them and pet them and feed them, and not live in facilities and work until they’re not functional anymore.”