The Uglier Side Of Dog Racing -- Some Greyhounds, No Longer Useful, Die Gruesomely

The scene is a citrus orchard in Arizona: Scattered beneath the lemon trees are the gruesome remains of 143 greyhounds, each one either shot in the head or clubbed. Because their left ears had borne the standard registration tattoo, the perpetrator of this horrific deed has chopped them off in an effort to elude detection.

Move over to central Florida: On a farm set deep in the Ocala woods, 194 greyhounds are penned up in unspeakable conditions. Unfed, the dogs are crammed two, three, even four to a crate, and are subsisting on a diet of their own excrement. Their bodies are covered with ticks, fleas and oozing sores. The stench is appalling.

Now . . . to a farm in upstate Florida: This time the starving and diseased total 100. The owner of the farm had 75 others euthanized on orders of the animal welfare department, but instead of dropping the carcasses in a hole and covering them up with dirt, he has piled them up and left them to rot in the hot sun.

This is what happens to greyhounds who no longer have economic potential to the people who race them. This is the dark and forbidding side of the sport - indeed, the terrible shame of it - and it has stirred the deep, intense passions of Philadelphian David Wolf. The owner of an industrial real estate firm in Philadelphia, Wolf, 53, organized the National Greyhound Adoption Program in 1990 and has spent countless thousands of his funds to place close to 700 greyhounds in loving homes. Whenever he hears that even a single greyhound has been discovered dead or starving, he seethes with rage and asks himself: "How can someone do this to such a beautiful creature?" He is the conscience of greyhound racing.

"Greyhounds are so gentle and affectionate," Wolf said, seated behind his desk in an industrial park in the shadows of Holmesburg Prison. "Whenever I hear of someone abusing them, or who has no compassion for them . . ."

He sighed and shook his head, then added with a glint of anger in his eyes: "I could just kill them."

WHAT HAPPENS TO THESE ANIMALS?

He was in Florida on vacation in 1989 and happened to spend what seemed to be an innocent day at Hollywood Greyhound Track. That was where it began for David Wolf. There with his wife, Gerda, and an acquaintance who owned greyhounds, Wolf wondered aloud, just out of curiosity: "What happens to these animals when their racing career ends?" The question led Wolf to some troubling answers, and it sparked an obsession for greyhound rescue and adoption that has utterly consumed him.

"Their lives are in our control," Wolf said of the animals. "We are - in a sense - their gods."

Overbreeding, the practice of using live animals as training lures and the crude disposal of excess dogs are just part of the scenario Wolf discovered upon entering the world of greyhound racing. In that the dogs produce large litters (six to eight on the average, though 12 is not uncommon) and but a fraction of those born can be expected to have value either on the track or in breeding, the search for champions has created a scenario in which more than 50,000 have to be either fed or disposed of each year. The accepted procedure for winnowing out the old or uncompetitive has been an injection of pentobarbital sodium, commonly known as euthansia, but a small percentage have exercised cheaper, easier options that have steeped the greyhound industry in shadows.

Here is a sampling of what happens in those shadows:

-- Owner Louis "Buddy" Berenson was ordered to close the Key West (Fla.) Dog Track in March 1991 when a sewage system backed up and created a public health danger. According to Joy Mayne, a trainer who had dogs there, the sewer overflowed into the parking lot and created a puddle of liquefied feces 13 feet in length and 3 feet in width. In an emergency hearing before Van Jones, the director of the Florida Division of Parimutuel Wagering, others testifed that the greyhounds boarded there were emaciated, dehydrated and suffering from flea and tick infestation. Berenson agreed not to operate in Florida again.

-- Sixteen dead greyhounds were discovered in a small landfill in Athol, Idaho, in October 1989. Clustered among rotting mattresses, spoiled meat and other household garbage, the animals had been destroyed at the Prairie Animal Hospital because of fractures or illnesses that the owners deemed too expensive to treat. Bob Lee, the general manager at Coeur d'Alene Greyhound Park, said the elimination of the dogs was "the truth of the business." No crime was committed in this particular case, but it clearly underscored the uglier aspects of the sport.

-- Of the 143 greyhound carcasses that were discovered in a Chandler Heights, Ariz., citrus orchard in January 1992, it developed that one still had a section of its left ear remaining that included part of the registration number. That led animal welfare investigators to one Eugene McGaughey, one of the top greyhound breeders in the state. McGaughey, 64, pleaded no contest and received 30 days in jail and a $25,000 fine for criminal littering.

-- Caretakers Ed and Norma Todd and their son, Patrick, were convicted on 10 counts of animal cruelty and sentenced to jail terms and probation in connection with the 194 greyhounds that were subjected to inhumane conditions at the Ocala farm in November 1991. The Todds said kennel owner James Henry Fors, of Bradenton, Fla., who had planned to ship the dogs to Venezuela for racing, had stopped sending food for the animals. Fors was not charged with a crime. Wolf has placed 140 of the surviving dogs in adoptive homes.

-- More than three years after Lake City Animal Shelter director Margaret Smith discovered the 100 greyhounds in a state of starvation in upstate Florida in August 1989, kennel owner Don Mitten and the caretaker at his farm, Debbie Johnson, still are being sought on animal cruelty and abandonment charges. Neighbors were forced to bury the carcasses of the animals.

Leading advocates of greyhound racing contend that what happened in Arizona, Florida and Idaho are isolated cases of untoward practices. The prevailing defense the National Greyhound Association uses is this: The press has sensationalized the activities of a small, unsavory element. However, critics of the sport point to deeper, unaddressed problems: overbreeding and the pervasive, illegal use of live animals such as jack rabbits or kittens as training lures.

The opposition has been fierce. In addition to the vociferous efforts of David Wolf and others, the Humane Society of the United States issued a position paper that condemned the "inherent cruelties" of dog racing and argued that it "should not be tolerated in a civilized society." When the American Greyhound Track Operators Association asked Ketchum Public Relations, of Washington, D.C., to help enhance its image, Ketchum declined, citing the live lure issue and the lack of willingness on the part of members to enact changes.

"Look, the sport does not have to be as terrible as it is," Wolf said. "What it has to do is this: Go in and wipe out the scum who are ruining it."

A BOLD SPECTACLE

The public-address announcer at Flagler Greyhound Track intoned, "There goes Speedy!" and the starting boxes popped open: A field of eight greyhounds bolted into the cool Florida sunshine. In pursuit of a whirring artificial lure (Speedy), the field spaced out in a blur of dazzling colors as the sparse crowd grew louder, seemed larger. Slanting into the homestretch, the wind flowing over their pinned-back ears, the dogs dashed under the finish line in a pack and skidded to a panting stop as the track crew dropped a plastic curtain in their path. A bettor standing at the rail slapped his rolled-up program in his hand and shouted: "Yesssssssss!"

This is the bold spectacle of greyhound racing, and it attracts hundreds of thousands of spectators each year in the 18 states where it is legal. The sixth-largest sport in the United States in annual attendance, greyhound racing sprang from the elitist diversion of wild-game coursing in 17th century England, in which two or more sight hounds (Afghans, whippets or greyhounds) were set upon hares in an open field and judged for speed. Noblemen of that era cherished the greyhound. Even before that, the Pharaohs of ancient Egypt delighted in their slender, athletic build.

Greyhound racing evolved in the United States upon the discovery of the artificial lure in 1907 and soon inherited a circumspect place in American culture. Gangsters invaded the sport during the 1920s, and it has been the purview ever since of an unending procession of characters who could have stepped out of the film "Deliverance." Operating on small farms hidden deep in woods, the proprietors of breeding kennels are commonly poor, buried beneath piles of unpaid bills. Should a particular greyhound go down with an injury or show a disinclination for running, that animal becomes an immediate liability and is deleted from the herd.

When David Wolf asked, "What happens to these animals . . .?" he found himself confronted with some sickening answers. He found out that only one greyhound in eight will live to be 4 years old; the others either are slaughtered as puppies because of a lack of racing potential or die of diseases contracted from eating a brand of food called 4-D, which, in essence, is the remains of animals who were butchered while either dead, dying, diseased or disabled.

"I wonder," Wolf said, grimacing, "how those people would like to eat a cheeseburger composed of that junk."

Because it costs $1,400 to raise a greyhound and get it from the farm to the training track - and, remember, at this point, there are no guarantees that the dog will perform - the overhead for even a prosperous kennel can be daunting. To offset some of the expenses involved, it is a common practice to sell the overflow to scientific research labs. When, for example, the U.S. Army was working with a synthetic compound designed to hold fragmented bone together (an experiment that could lead to advancements in treating battlefield wounds), the Army chose the greyhound to experiment on because its long, powerful hind legs have healing characteristics similar to humans. The greyhound also is valuable to scientists because it has a universal blood type, a large heart and extraordinarily high tolerance for pain.

"Greyhounds are calm animals," said a technician at a Florida veterinary school. "We get them in here and do as we please with them."

Wolf echoed that. "Greyhounds are trusting animals," he said, the bitterness welling up in his voice. "We should be ashamed of ourselves for how we treat them."

Wolf believes that "our treatment of innocent creatures" (such as children and animals) sheds a probing light into the deep corners of the human condition. Whenever he hears that a greyhound has been shot in the head or - as it once was rumored - tossed in the Gulf of Mexico to the sharks, it sends a shudder up his spine.

He wonders: "Does chasing a buck come down to that? Are people that cold? Where is our humanity?"

ADOPTION PREFERRED ANTIDOTE

In the rear of Seminole County Animal Control in Orlando is a large trash bucket. Inside it are pieces of pale, broken bone and particles of coarse debris. When an animal is euthanized here, behind a closed door in a small room adjoining the kennel, the remains are wheeled into the crematorium and from there poured into the bucket, which in due course is loaded on a truck and emptied out in a landfill. Said Frank Kirk, acting head of animal control: "Usually takes us . . . oh . . . close to a half a year to fill it up."

Seminole County Animal Control euthanized 1,076 greyhounds during the 1990-91 fiscal year; that averages out to close to 21 per week. Concerned that Seminole County was becoming a "clearinghouse" for greyhounds (kennel owners were traveling there from as far away as Miami), Kirk was authorized to increase the rates for euthanizing the breed from $12 to $30. Suddenly (but perhaps not surprisingly), the procession of greyhounds to Seminole slowed. Less than 600 greyhounds were euthanized during the 1991-92 fiscal year.

"The question is: `What is happening to the ones we are no longer seeing?' " Kirk said. "I would like to think some of them are being adopted."

Adoption is the preferred antidote of canine aficionados to the ills troubling the greyhound industry. While Wolf is 99 percent certain that the dogs to whom Kirk referred are not being adopted, but disposed of in some other, surely brutal fashion, he is just as certain that an overwhelming percentage of the animals could be placed with adoptive owners. Critical of such adoption organizations as Greyhound Pets of America, which receives financial support from and thus is answerable to the National Greyhound Association and the American Greyhound Track, he observed: "Far more can be done. The industry is blind to the problem."

Comments such as that do not endear Wolf to either the leaders of the racing industry or even his peers in the adoption underground. A kennel owner in South Florida who supplies Wolf with greyhounds said: "David is . . . well . . . I like him, but he can be difficult." The kennel owner asked that she not be identified because if "word leaked I was working with David, I would be ostracized." Others had the same fears. A woman on the Gulf Coast who supplies Wolf with greyhounds claimed that the "tracks will stop giving me dogs if it becomes known I was working with David." The woman added, "I get along with David but . . .

But?

"But, well, he tends to see situations in black and white," the woman continued. "He bulldozes people. Instead of being diplomatic, he will come in and say, `This is wrong!' He is abrasive."

Abrasive is one word for Wolf, but there are others: compassionate, focused, committed. Upon learning the answer to his question, "What happens to the dogs . . .?" he started running classified ads in Philadelphia to see if he could help adopt some of them out; he was purchasing a condo in Florida and envisioned shuttling greyhounds back to Philadelphia. When the response to the ads proved encouraging, the National Greyhound Adoption Program was born. He set up a kennel in his industrial park, worked out a deal with USAir to ship the animals from Florida - and soon was inclined to purchase a large life-insurance policy when he started receiving threatening phone calls.

"To say that I am unconcerned would be untrue," said Wolf, who set up the greyhound program and his family as joint beneficiaries on the policy. "To say that I am unliked in the greyhound industry would be an understatement. Whether or not these people would resort to physical violence . . . who knows?"

That question just seemed to sit there, in this odd dead space of intrigue, when, at length, Wolf was asked: "But . . . well . . . why dogs?" In a society in which children are battered and without food, in which people sleep bundled up on sidewalks, why - in that society - is it of consequence whether an animal has acceptable shelter?

Wolf hesitated before answering, then replied: "I am not Ross Perot. I cannot solve every problem in society. I decided to just pick one thing in this wide world of ours and this was it. With work - and some luck - I think I can bring a positive change to bear."

He glanced down at the greyhound stretched out on his sofa, smiled and added: "Greyhounds provide us with such joy."

A HOME FOR BULLET

Up on the edge of their seats, the couple held hands as Wolf shuffled some papers. There to pick up their greyhound for adoption, Tom Gindle and Janite Whitmore, of Bridgeport, N.J., had supplied Wolf with the required references (from a veterinarian and a friend), paid the required adoption fee ($150) and were receiving their "greyhound survival kit," a box of items that includes a sterilization certificate, heartworm medication, a press release to send to the local paper and a bumper sticker.

"This is an $80 value," Wolf told the couple. "Questions?"

When the two looked at each other and said, `No," Wolf escorted them to the kennel to pick up their dog, Bullet. The last of the greyhounds Wolf received from the Ocala raid, Bullet had a bare spot on his hindquarters and some small scars on his back, but had recovered and was in the bloom of health.

"Remember," Wolf warned. "Keep his teeth clean."

"Come on, Bullet," Whitmore cooed. "Come on home with mommy and daddy."

Bullet pranced up to his new owners and hopped in the back seat of their car. David Wolf grinned as the car turned out the lot and said: "I hate to see him go."