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A deep, scratchy voice announces their presence over the
loudspeaker. “Heeeere comes Hollywood!” The gates open, and eight
muzzled greyhounds spring forth in a speedy, thundering mass of bobbing
fur, each wearing a brightly colored, numbered jersey. Tiny puffs of
dirt follow their sinewy legs. This is the seventh race of the night at
Mardi Gras Racetrack and Gaming Center in Hallandale Beach, the
highest-paying dog track in Florida. It’s August 19, 2006. The race
begins at 9:23 p.m. At 9:24, the audience will witness something
horrid.
The dogs set off sprinting around an oval-shaped dirt track, chasing
a loud, buzzing mechanical lure. The lure is attached to a metal arm
speeding along the inside edge of the track. Like bulls who see the
flick of a matador’s cape, the dogs lunge madly after the lure.
Greyhounds can hit 45 miles per hour in just two steps, but the lure
always stays just out of their reach.
A sleek, shiny, black 2-year-old wearing a red jersey with a white
“5” on it — his name is BB’s Story Book, but in racing parlance,
he is simply “the five” — is quick out of the box. A few strides
into the race, however, the six dog nudges Story Book inside. Then the
eight bumps him again. This time, Story Book struggles back, running
neck and neck with the eight. As the dogs lean left into a turn, Story
Book’s hind legs slip. There’s a cloud of dust. Story Book is sucked
under the eight. The eight stumbles but recovers, hurrying off to catch
the pack. Story Book, however, rolls out of the picture.
The announcer says matter-of-factly, “Going down, that was the
five.”
As the rest of the dogs continue around the track, Story Book rolls
to a stop deep in the first turn. He stands back up, dizzy and weak. He
can still hear the mechanical lure buzzing around the track. Then, with
that amazing greyhound eyesight, he spots it.
The three dog is in the lead, just entering the final turn, when the
announcer realizes what’s about to happen. “Get the five!” he commands.
Then again, with an added degree of disgust: “Get the five!”
Still mixed up from his fall, Story Book sees the lure making its
way back around the track. Now it’s on the straightaway coming toward
him. He takes off at full speed — in the wrong direction.
This is a no-win situation. If the lure operator stops the arm, the
seven dogs following behind it will collide in a terrifying pile of
snapped bones and broken necks; if he doesn’t, it will drive right
through the fragile body of the dazed, 73-pound black dog.
The lure doesn’t stop.
The bar hits Story Book at the collarbone, shattering his chest and
bending each leg in a new, unnatural direction. Knocked end over end,
the dog lands on his back. He lies there convulsing in front of the
grandstand. The other dogs barely dodge Story Book’s flailing body. The
announcer lets out an abhorred grunt.
As I watch video of the tragic race, I notice that Story Book has a
white belly and white feet, just like my newly adopted greyhound
— who raced on the very same track just a few months after this
incident. Jailamony (her racing name) is 4 years old. She is sweet and
revels in human affection. But there are constant reminders of her
racing life: missing teeth, patches of missing fur (called “kennel
butt”), tattoos in her ears, and a noticeable limp.
The longer Jailamony lives with me, the more questions I have: What
were her racing days like? What happened to the other dogs from her
litter? And what really happens to greyhounds that aren’t
adopted when they’re done racing?
To answer my questions, I visited my dog’s old track. I spoke with
industry veterans and racing opponents. And I ventured where reporters
rarely tread — inside the heavily secured compound known as the
Florida Kennels.
Florida, with the majority of breeding farms and nearly half the
tracks in the country, is the epicenter of dog racing. Although a
well-organized antiracing lobby now has its sights set on the Sunshine
State, it’s hard to tell if legislative efforts are hastening or
hindering the end of this moribund industry.
When I answer the front door, I’m greeted by 60 pounds of twitchy
curiosity waiting to come inside. Jailamony has a sleek, shiny, black
coat with a white chest, what look like little white socks, and a
matching white tip at the end of her wagging tail. She’s all muscle,
ribs, and light-stepping legs, like a pony. She wiggles through the
door, eager to sniff every square foot of my small, two-story
apartment.
When my girlfriend and I visited the Friends of Greyhounds Inc.
adoption kennel in Hialeah, we saw Jailamony pressing her face against
the inside of her cage. Workers told us black dogs don’t get adopted as
often because some people think they might be evil. Jailamony gave us
big take-me-home eyes, and when kennel staff tried to put her back in
her crate, she hid behind my girlfriend’s legs.
We adopted her in March, on her fourth birthday.
Moments after being personally delivered to my house by Michelle
Weaver, president of the adoption agency, Jailamony discovers the
stuffed chipmunk we had waiting for her. She prances around the
furniture with it dangling from her mouth. Her tail whacks everything.
She has never lived outside of a kennel. The stairs completely confound
her — she figures out how to go up, but once at the top, she
peers down, befuddled by the steep, carpeted obstacle before her.
“You’re gonna change her name, right?” Weaver asks.
“We haven’t really decided yet,” I say. “Jailamony really is a
horrible-sounding name, though.”
Cute as she is, Jailamony bears inescapable remnants from her
mysterious past as a racer. In addition to the missing teeth and fur,
both ears are marked with faded, green tattoos. The left ear has a
series of numbers, and the right reads: “ESV.” Weaver explains that it
was supposed to say 35A, since Jailamony was the first, or A, puppy
tattooed in a litter “whelped” (born) in March 2005 (3/5). “Sometimes
[trainers] get nice and drunk before they tattoo the dogs,” she says,
“and the first one gets screwed up like this.”
Then there’s Jailamony’s right hind leg. It swings out awkwardly
from her otherwise sleek, graceful gait. At the bottom of the hoc (the
equivalent of a human calf) is a hard bulb of bone. In her last race, I
learn, she broke her hoc and the bone had been set at the track.
Jailamony never puts that foot straight down, and when she squats, her
leg shakes.
Greyhounds are sight hounds; Jailamony can see a black cat in the
dark at 300 yards. They were first brought to the United States in the
mid-1800s to help farmers control the jackrabbit population. They’ve
been bred for thousands of years for speed, beauty, and the gentle
demeanor that makes them great pets. Ancient Egyptians considered them
royalty. Arabs admired them so much that they were the only dog
permitted to sleep in tents and ride atop camels. Greyhounds are the
only breed mentioned by name in the Bible (Proverbs 30:29-31). In
medieval England, the law permitted only noblemen to own
greyhounds.
So seeing one of these magnificent creatures limping around my
living room, I wonder about their lives as professional athletes. What
did my dog go through before she came to me? The question haunts me,
and the answer seems unknowable — like wondering about the past
dalliances of someone you love.
Long before spring break — before professional football,
basketball, baseball, or ice hockey; before slot machines, card rooms,
and cruises to nowhere; before most of the cities in South Florida were
even incorporated — there was dog racing. The dog tracks were as
synonymous with Florida as fat men in floral print shirts.
The first track in the country opened in Hialeah in 1926. By the
’30s and ’40s, dog racing was South Florida’s top tourist attraction.
Every night, the grandstands were packed with young and old, rich and
poor. Greyhound racing was the shared pastime in a land devoid of Babe
Ruths and Joe DiMaggios.
And racing made a lot of people rich. After purchasing the
Pittsburgh Steelers with money he won betting on horses, Art Rooney
purchased the Palm Beach Kennel Club in 1970. His grandson, Pat Rooney
Jr., remains managing director of the track, and Pat’s brother Tom is a
U.S. representative from nearby Tequesta.
Over time, however, the industry began to develop a backlash.
Stories began trickling out about dogs being killed if they weren’t
fast enough. There were rumors that trainers dumped slow greyhounds in
oceans and swamps to be eaten by sharks and gators. In the ’80s and
’90s, the debate was over the use of live lures, such as rabbits, which
have since been banned.
An Arizona woman named Joan Eidinger has tried to collect every
published report of greyhound abuse over the past 15 years. In the
Greyhound Network News — a quarterly newsletter she
publishes — the headlines are horrifying: Three racing dogs found
dead at a Daytona Kennel, Seven greyhounds die from extreme heat in
Arkansas, Iowa hauler accident kills five greyhounds, 17 dogs die of
smoke inhalation in Naples. There are stories of respiratory infections
and equine influenza. One article tells of a thousand Wisconsin racing
greyhounds sold to a cardiac research lab. Using industry breeding
numbers, Eidinger estimates that between 1986 and 2006, about 600,000
greyhounds were killed — about 80 every day.
Antiracing groups like Massachusetts-based Grey2K USA point to these
sorts of atrocities when they call for states like Florida to ban
greyhound racing. Working with local organizations like the Fort
Lauderdale-based Animal Rights Foundation of Florida, activists lobby
legislators, take out antiracing ads in newspapers near tracks, and
post videos of incidents like Story Book’s on the internet.
The campaign seems to be working. A ballot measure in the 2008
election will end greyhound racing in Massachusetts. In the past five
years, 15 tracks nationwide have either shut down completely or ended
live racing.
Bring on the industry’s demise, says Grey2K President Christine
Dorchak. When I call to get her perspective on the industry, Dorchak
rattles off a litany of greyhound racing’s alleged offenses:
“[Trainers] feed them grade-D meat. The dogs don’t have access to
dental work. They get the bare minimum medicine and medical treatment,
if they’re lucky. And they suffer industrialized confinement in these
standardized cages for up to 22 hours a day.”
One thing about greyhounds: They aren’t likely to die of old age.
When dogs turn 4 or 5 and are finished racing, she claims, “it’s more
cost-efficient for trainers and owners to kill a dog than to house and
feed it.”
Pro-racing folks balk at that claim, saying that today, most
greyhounds are humanely retired, not killed. But in 2002, Alabama
investigators found the bodies of thousands of dead greyhounds on the
property of 68-year-old Robert Rhodes, a part-time security guard at a
track in Pensacola. Rhodes admitted using a .22 caliber rifle to shoot
more than 2,000 dogs from all over Florida during the 20 years he
worked at the track. He was paid $10 per dog, which he said covered the
cost of digging the holes across his 18-acre property. Investigators
called the graveyard “a Dachau for dogs.”
All across the open room, grown men are shouting at televisions.
“Come on, Two! Move your ass, Two!” The betting parlor at the Mardi
Gras racetrack consists of a long line of TV sets simulcasting races
from most of the 13 tracks in the state, plus a row of betting machines
and cashier windows. Quiet, white-haired men in polyester pants and
mismatched jackets from the ’70s sit at Formica tables, clenching
handfuls of betting tickets. A group of men in their 40s — the
youngest in the room — prefer to stand. A few businessmen, still
donning the shiny shoes and pressed slacks they wore to the office,
wait impatiently as the dogs they’ve bet on are loaded into starting
boxes in Daytona, Jacksonville, West Palm Beach. Collectively, these
men — or the soft, folded American bills they’re handing over
— are the lifeblood of the industry.
The scene is a far cry from racing’s heyday. Even now, on a “busy”
Friday night, only about 200 men (and virtually no women) are here to
watch the greyhounds. The throngs of humanity around the slot machines
and poker tables dwarf the dog-betting crowd.
By the time I march up to the offices to interview the director of
dog racing at Mardi Gras, I’ve heard so many horrific details about the
industry, I’m wondering how these people can sleep at night.
But when I meet Aldo Leone, he is no monster. He’s a mild, friendly
man with short hair, an easy smile, and a slight New England accent.
His office is small, and the wood-paneled walls are covered with
paintings of greyhounds. He tells me he got into the business as a
lead-out (the track employee who walks the dog from the paddock to the
gate) in Hollywood when he was 16. He’s 46 now. It was just a job when
he started, but he fell in love with the dogs.
Leone says “radical animal rights groups” like Grey2K take rare
incidents out of context and sensationalize them to scare people away
from a family-friendly industry. “They’ll tell you the dogs don’t like
it, that they’re being abused. They want to shut these tracks down, but
they don’t realize they’ll just be putting more dogs out on the
street.” If not for racing, he says, the breed probably would have died
out centuries ago.
“But aren’t thousands of dogs euthanized every year?” I ask.
Leone says that the antiracing groups’ breeding figures are
“ridiculous.” He says that 98 percent of racing dogs are adopted out
and that the other 2 percent return to breeding farms. “Retired
greyhounds are very popular. As you probably know, they make great
pets.” Then, without a hint of irony, he adds, “They’re becoming a
commodity.”
Leone says that because Mardi Gras is the top track in the state,
the dogs who can’t make it here “grade off” to other tracks, like being
sent down from the big leagues to a farm team. Although I’d spoken to a
former track veterinarian who told me he treated about one broken bone
per week, Leone says that injuries occur at a rate of “less than one a
month” and that most are “minor, one dog stepping on another’s foot,
that sort of thing.”
And that incident with BB’s Story Book? Leone says that night was
the only time he’s seen an accident with the lure. “That was a terrible
thing,” he says. He stares out his office window. The sun is setting on
the track. “Nobody ever wants to see that.”
Before leaving the track, I walk through the trainer’s area behind
the paddock. There are at least a dozen pickup trucks, each with a load
of barking dogs waiting to go back to the kennel, 15 miles away in
Hialeah.
A thin man with a mustache and dark-brown hair parted on the side
— the old-fashioned way — walks a panting, exhausted
brindled dog. The dog has just come in third, earning roughly $80 that
will be split between the trainer and owner. The man hoses him off and
walks him through a cooling pool.
This is Joe Trudden, a trainer and the owner of Tru-Paws Kennels. He
wears a polo tucked into his unbelted Levi’s. He tells me that if I
want the truth about racing, I can go to the compound to see his
kennel.
“Come see for yourself if you think these dogs are being abused,” he
says.
I show up unannounced on a Sunday morning at the massive, gated
compound called the Florida Kennels that includes Tru-Paws. The 70-acre
plot consists of about 50 buildings able to house 50 to 100 dogs each
(there are around 2,000 dogs total), a full-sized practice track, and
several fenced sprinting runs.
All the dogs running at Flagler Dog Track and Entertainment Center
or Mardi Gras are kept here. Outsiders — especially reporters
— are not welcome on the compound, but Trudden gets me past the
security guards at the gate.
Trudden is just finishing preparation of the dogs’ food. He starts
with 75 pounds of raw meat, which comes in giant blocks labeled: NOT
FOR HUMAN CONSUMPTION. Trudden adds the contents of a tall, industrial
pot that’s been simmering on the small stove at the front of his
building. It’s got chicken broth, some carrots, a few different kinds
of pasta, and rice. He mixes it all together with his bare hands.
To the food concoction, he adds a few small scoops of powdered
Gatorade “to build their electrolytes.” He scoops the mixture into
silver bowls and weighs them. Then he adds a large scoop of a standard
grain dog food. Before he hands out the bowls to the dogs in their
crates, he squirts some with pancake syrup, “in case they have low
glucose.” He has a bottle of Tums handy in case he suspects one of the
dogs has a bellyache.
“There’s nobody who loves these dogs more than we do,” he tells me.
“I feel like I have 60 pets.”
Trudden asks me how often I’ve taken my dog to the vet since I’ve
had her.
Once.
“Well, these dogs each see a vet twice a week.” He points out: “It
behooves us to take good care of the dogs. If they’re not in good
shape, they’re not going to win.”
In the back of Trudden’s kennel, the Rolling Stones play from a
stereo to 62 dogs in individual crates stacked two high along both
walls; each standardized crate measures 26 inches wide by 30 inches
high and is 42 inches deep. The females are on top. “They jump better,”
Trudden says. Females receive hormones so they can race with males
without fear of “accidental breeding.”
The dogs all look healthy. Most wag their tails when they see us.
The few I look at closely have good teeth and soft fur. Trudden knows
each dog by name and kisses some of the females’ heads, calling each
“mama.”
There’s a large industrial scale — each dog must weigh within
one pound of what it weighed in the previous race, per track rules
— and near the front door is a chart detailing each dog’s racing
schedule and special needs. On the walls are photos of Trudden and his
family with past champions.
Trudden was introduced to greyhounds by his grandpa Joe, who played
the dogs every day. He fondly remembers studying the program together
every afternoon and waiting anxiously to learn whether the dogs they
picked had won. When his grandfather died, Trudden scraped together
$1,200, bought a dog, and named it Joe’s Unicorn. The dog won early and
often, and by the early ’90s, Trudden was able to quit his job at the
telephone company to become a full-time trainer. Not long after that,
he bought his own kennel.
One of the dogs he trained was BB’s Story Book. I ask him about the
incident with the lure.
“I was here that night,” he says. “It’s one of the worst things I’ve
ever seen. I scooped him up with my own arms.” His voice gets softer
and his eyes become glassy as he describes speeding to the animal
hospital. He kicks a rock. “There’s nothing they could do,” he says.
BB’s Story Book was euthanized.
As Trudden works, he defends his beloved industry. He says he has
never had a healthy dog euthanized and has even kept dogs in his kennel
for more than a year — at an average cost of $5 per day —
before a spot in an adoption kennel opened up. Trudden estimates that
the industry employs 20,000 people in Florida alone. “That’s not
counting the people who sell the trucks and the tires and the gas and
the food.”
Still, Trudden acknowledges that public opinion has swayed and that
the end of dog racing is inevitable. “I just hope it’s not in my
lifetime,” he says.
We walk out back to the two fenced runs where the dogs are “turned
out” at least twice a day. Alongside the kennel is a small, metal
whirlpool for the dogs, on the day after they race. It’s a greyhound
Jacuzzi. After the “hydrotherapy,” he says, each dog gets a hand
massage.
Trudden turns to me: “Do these dogs look abused?”
Joe Trudden might be a conscientious guy — but not every
trainer is. In December 2007, state investigators from the Department
of Business and Professional Regulation, Division of Pari-Mutuel
Wagering — the state agency overseeing greyhound racing in
Florida — discovered a gruesome scene. In building four, just a
few hundred yards from Trudden’s kennel, 74 dogs were left in dirty
cages with almost no food or medicine for months.
According to the DBPR’s report, the owner, David Dasenbrock, lived
in Oregon and had stopped sending money for food or flea and tick
medication. The dogs were found emaciated, lying in piles of their own
waste. Many had gnawed themselves bloody and raw. The floor was covered
with blood, ticks, and rodent droppings. There was a dead rat in the
corner. There was no edible food on site, and the dogs had no water.
“The smell of urine in the kennel was unbearable,” an investigator
wrote.
But the DBPR has only limited power, and all it could do was issue a
warning. Four months passed and conditions only got worse. When they
returned, investigators found a trainer dipping greyhounds into a
bucket of Malathion, a cheap insecticide that’s highly toxic to dogs.
It was the cheapest way to take care of the flea and tick problem. The
trainer had also been cleaning the building — with diesel
fuel.
In May 2008, Dasenbrock’s pari-mutuel license was suspended and the
trainer was charged with animal cruelty, a misdemeanor. A year later,
all 74 dogs have either been adopted or are in the hands of adoption
agencies. The worst part: Nobody really knows how often this
happens.
There are whispers at the track of a veterinarian nearby who will
put down any greyhound, healthy or not, for $75, no questions asked,
but obtaining reliable statistics about casualties is impossible.
Florida tracks have no legal obligation to report injuries, deaths, or
cases of neglect and abuse to the state. Breeders, owners, and trainers
never have to report how many dogs are culled, euthanized, or killed
during transport. The vast majority of regulation in Florida relates
not to the welfare of the animals but to how profits are divided.
Meanwhile, in November of last year, there were two more horrific
incidents two days apart. On November 17, a 3-year old brindled
greyhound named Birthday Toy was electrocuted after being bumped into
the lure line at Sanford Orlando Kennel Club. Then on November 19, Jawa
Spock, a 2-year-old fawn, was euthanized at Palm Beach Kennel Club
after breaking both back legs during a race.
This is why Grey2K USA is targeting Florida’s greyhound racing
industry. The group has video footage of both incidents on its website
(grey2kusa.org), and this April,
Christine Dorchak traveled to Tallahassee to oppose new legislation
that would expand gambling and subsidize greyhound racing. She held a
news conference on the back steps of the Old Capitol Building in
Tallahassee with the help of Scooby and Molly, two retired
greyhounds.
Whether it’s pressure from groups like Dorchak’s or because people
have vast entertainment options these days, the dog racing industry is
indisputably in decline. In fact, it might have died out already if it
weren’t subsidized by tax breaks and other forms of gambling.
In 2000, the Florida Legislature approved a $20 million tax break
for the struggling pari-mutuel industry (horse tracks, dog tracks, and
jai-alai frontons). Then, the pari-mutuels lobbied for the right to
offer slot machines and high-stakes poker. Since South Florida voters
approved them in 2005, slots and card rooms have become so profitable
that most track owners would probably be willing to drop dog racing
entirely. (In 2007, the state collected less than $6 million in taxes
from the greyhound industry, compared to $125 million from slot
machines.) But the way the law stands, in order to keep a pari-mutuel
license and have access to that juicy income flow from slots and poker,
dog tracks are required to race at least 100 days a year.
Greyhound racing won’t end unless that law is changed.
Dorchak says her group would support any bills that would rid
pari-mutuels of the racing requirements. Every year, such bills are
introduced in the state Legislature, but they never make it out of
committee. In her quest, she’s found an odd ally. Mardi Gras CEO Dan
Adkins showed up at the capitol. Dorchak says Adkins even jokingly wore
an “End Greyhound Racing” button.
“He might not be able to say it as publicly, but he hates giving
that money to breeders too,” she says. “Racing is a losing game he has
to play to get the cards and slots. They could take or leave the dogs.
It’s all about money.”
Still, the more I learn about the industry, the more I want to know
about my dog. The longer I have her, the more I see that she
really does love to run, even if it means she’s hopping on the hurt
leg. Most of the time, though, she just lies around the apartment
looking adorable. We also decided to keep her name. Although
Jailamony evokes something dark and degenerate, her past is part
of who she is and what brought her to us.
The truth is, the world of greyhound racing can be just as
heartbreaking and complicated as that twisted black leg with the little
white sock. It hurts to think of the toll this industry has taken on
that sweet dog. If she hadn’t raced, she wouldn’t have a limp, a bald
ass, and grey hair at 4 years old. Then again, if she didn’t race, I
wouldn’t have her now.
Through the adoption group, I learn that Jailamony was trained by
the delightfully titled company Bad Boy Racing. At the kennel, I see a
smashed-up dog truck with those words blasted across the top of the
windshield. But I don’t find the truck owner, and I later learn the
company has been sold.
In hopes of finding someone who might remember my dog, I make
another trip to the track.
A funny thing about racetracks: There are always a few old
handicappers who remember every horse or dog in every race they’ve ever
seen, going back decades. In another life, these men could have been
great mathematicians or literature scholars; in places like Mardi Gras,
where the floor is littered with beer-drenched stubs of daily
heartbreak, they are the revered wise men.
During short breaks in the action at Mardi Gras, I ask around to see
whether anyone remembers betting on Jailamony. I get a lot of “that
name sounds familiar” and “if I could see the books, I’d know the dog.”
Then someone directs me to Norman Grant.
A fidgeting, wiry black man in a ski cap, Grant recognizes the name
immediately. “A black dog,” he says. “Your dog’s a black dog. I
remember.”
I nod.
“Your dog don’t break. Don’t break worth a damn. But she’s a closer.
She’s a strong, strong closer.”
Indeed, most of the races in which she placed, Jailamony came from
behind. Through a website called greyhound-data.com, I find Jailamony’s
racing history and trace her heritage back 34 generations, to 1820
— about 32 generations more than I know about myself. Her sire’s
sire was Molotov, a member of the Greyhound Racing Hall of Fame who set
track records in Colorado that still stand today.
The site says there were two other dogs from Jailamony’s litter
registered as racers: a female named Jam It Up and a male named Speed
Bump Brent. Brent never made it past the schooling races, and like the
dogs from the litter that weren’t registered racers, there is no record
of where he is now. Jam It Up is still racing in Naples.
Each dog’s racing history includes racing notes written in a
cryptic, handicapper code. If a dog broke away from the pack on the
back stretch and won, for example, the note might say: “Pulled Away Md
Trk.”
Jailamony dominated her practice races (to qualify at a track, a dog
must finish in the top four). She won her second race at Mardi Gras.
She worked her way up the ranks and earned nearly $2,000 in all. But
then, her firsts and seconds turned into sixths and sevenths.
The handicapping notes tell the story. Over and over, Jailamony was
“bumped 1st turn mid trk” or “crowded early.” In race after race, the
notes say she “stumbled, fell” or “broke to outside, collided” or
“bounced around early.” After 25 races at Mardi Gras, she was
downgraded to Flagler in Miami.
It was there, on June 13, 2008, that she had her final race, the
32nd of her career. She was wearing the 6 jersey the day she broke her
leg. The note is short. It says: “Dropped Back 1st Turn, DNF.”
Like so many greyhounds, my dog’s life as a racer ended with those
three ominous letters, DNF: Did Not Finish.
