Wednesday, November 26, 2008

MA Votes to Ban Greyhound Racing

Forgive me if you were already aware of this, but I thought since I've been talking about such negative things, that I would change the subject! The voters of Massachusetts have spoken and they have approved a state-wide ban on Greyhound Racing.

Read an article that details here. Reports say that dog racing will be slowly phased out by 2010.

For a long time, there has been controversy regarding dog racing and animal rights. What do you think on this?

Personally, I've never been a race fan ...

3 comments:

Panthergirl said...

I have mixed feelings about it. While I certainly want to see racing be a humane industry, so much of it is not. However, if racing goes away, so goes the breed of racing greyhound... a very different breed than the AKC greyhound. That makes me sad... these greys are very special. :(

Unfortunately, MA had some of the better tracks. Racing should be banned in FLORIDA, which has a horrible reputation.

DogsDeserveFreedom said...

Panthergirl - I don't know too much about the individual tracks. I have read about the industry (if you could call it that?), but haven't spent much time looking at the differences between the tracks themselves.


After some reflection, (and now that it is the day after my post :) lol), I wonder if they couldn't standardize practices? For example, what if the dog racing tracks looked at control in the way some horse tracks are banning barns that send their horses to slaughter? Something where they ban if the breeding/training facility is known to euthanize after failed races or if they have been known to inject their dogs with bad things ... I'm sure they could've come up with a better way to deal with this problem??

Then again - I'm not a politician and don't know if that sort of thing would work (or has already been tried??)

dogsdeservefreedom

RedDeerSeeker said...

Last night I watched a show on animals in movies. Particularly the chimpanzees, which have a very short movie career as babies, then quite quickly become to mature to manage. The owners then get rid of them to wherever they can, sometimes private zoos, or rescues, or medical labs, where they have to live for the next 40 years.
This totally made me think about racing dogs, and race horses. We are entertained by them, but they all have a very short career. This leaves the rest of their lives to deal with an abundance of unwanted dogs and horse, and whatever other animals have outlived their usefulness.

It just makes me wonder how important seeing a race is or having a laugh in a movie...It's not that important to me. I have never seen a race, and don't care if I ever do.