KEEPGREYHOUNDSRACING.ORG

Educating and advocating for the SPORT of Greyhound Racing!

• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 

It was my great pleasure, a few weeks back, to have been invited and to have attended the Massachusetts Greyhound Pets of America get-together, for the greyhound alumni of GPA-MA, and their adopters.

While visiting with friends and conversing about the greyhounds in attendance, we all were impressed by how many had made the scene—it was a cool, overcast, late summer day---but we were even more impressed by how remarkably well-behaved the greyhounds were.
Whether the dogs were walking around interacting with one another, greeting and making new friends, or participating in the beauty or fun-run contests, they were a model of perfectly-tempered deportment, and splendid behavior.

No one had to hesitate, wondering if exception might be taken to it, when they approached any greyhound while reaching out a hand in friendship. All such graces were gladly accepted.
I imagine it must actually be of great comfort to them, encountering a vast, new colony of greyhounds, having spent the formative years of their lives, and their lives as racing athletes, within, and as functioning members of just such an arrangement.
Greyhound culture is exceptional in today’s canine world. It is the culture of the canine colony. Each and every greyhound today, bred and raised to race, has been indelibly informed and shaped by this culture.

We have all heard the expression applied to so many things we wish to accomplish as members of society, which maintains that “it takes a village” to get the thing done.
For the fully-formed greyhound that we have come to know and embrace, whether it be the daring and electrifying athlete, or the elegant and languid sofa adornment, it took a colony. There is a handing-down to both nature and nurture.

That impressive ability to get along with one another, to communicate, to understand and respond to canine body language and signaling, and the willingness to seamlessly interact with one another, without incident, is the hallmark of the greyhound colony, and the keystone of greyhound culture.

Now, the greyhound colony, within the commercial enterprise of racing, is the essential element to it. If there is something amiss within the individual colony, and if the colony cannot function smoothly, as a stress-free unit, comprised of individuals who co-exist in accord with what are the traditional cultural mores of the colony, the colony will suffer.
In terms of performance, the colony will under-perform its opportunities. In more universal terms, the greyhounds will become unduly stressed.

Stress and discord are the antithesis of the greyhound colony and culture, just as togetherness and harmony are the lynchpins of it.
So, when we see a hundred or more greyhounds at a social gathering, and are duly impressed by their collegial deportment and temperate mannerisms, we should keep in mind that it is no accident--and that only happy, well-adjusted, well-raised and cared-for, unstressed greyhounds, keep the peace in the colony, and thrive within the culture.
And that is true from the growing up, through the handing down, onto the training and racing stages, and finally, into retirement and adoption.
copyright, 2018