A Bull in the China Shop of Life ([info]feoh) wrote,
@ 2008-10-24 13:08:00
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Entry tags:rants

Conflicted about MA state Question 3: Banning dog racing

Originally published at Blind, Not Dumb. You can comment here or there.

As others have pointed out, both sides on this issue are jumping up and down shrilly screaming the facts as they claim to see them at the top of their lungs…

But real, verifiable facts are mightily hard to come by. I’m personally rather conflicted on this one.

Both my wife and I are serious dog people. She can spot a puppy at 500 yards in a bustling crowd.

She is getting all sorts of messages from the MSPCA and their ilk claiming that the dogs are being horribly abused and that it must stop RIGHT NOW.

The Vote No on 3 contingent is mostly coming off sounding combative and shrill as well. Their Boston Globe piece reminded me of conservative talk radio - it might as well have been written by Rush Limbaugh.

The folks over at Protect Dogs and Jobs are citing the loss of 1,000 jobs and $4 million in state revenue if the ban passes, and claiming that the incidence of dog injury in the sport is incredibly small (1 injury for every 1000 dogs racing - something like .1%) and compare that to the injury stat for Girls Volleyball which is at 1.47%. the only thing I keep hearing from these folks about the abuse allegations is “Owners have every incentive to treat their dogs well, so they’ll race well” - but I’m not sure how well that theory holds water.

So who is right? Are the dogs actually being abused, or is this people getting carried away with themselves on principle and ignoring the actual facts of the matter?

As a voter, it’s a tough call. I have my mind pretty well made up on the other two (No and yes respectively) but I’m very much on the fence with this one.

Does anyone have any opinions on this? Or better yet any actual experience with the way the dogs are treated?

[ Edit: November 3rd, tomorrow is E day :) My wife and I plan to hit the polls early. I am no longer conflicted about this question, due to some excellent responses I got on my LiveJournal and some tertiary research I did as a result, I am now solidly in favor of the ban. I'm concerned that dogs which participate in racing are adversely effected by this, and their personalities are permanently damaged as a result. ]


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[info]tamidon
2008-10-24 06:13 pm UTC (link)
I was just thinking about that this morning. I have no idea what's up pro or against. After so many people being pro greyhound adoption I wonder what's going on with the dogs these days.

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[info]feoh
2008-10-24 06:39 pm UTC (link)
Interestingly, the greyhound adoption program was prominently featured in the vote no camp's WBZ interview. The guy in charge says that he tracks every racing grey hound in the state, and that once they are injured or in some other way become ineligible for racing they're immediately "petted out" to the adoption program.

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[info]tfarrell
2008-10-24 07:00 pm UTC (link)
For what it's worth, I've seen greyhounds that were former racers, and I've seen greyhounds that weren't. The ones that had always been pets were perky, happy, proud dogs like you'd expect a dog to be. The ones that were former racers were shy, skittish, frightened of people, not even entirely comfortable with their person, had a kind of distressed look in their eye. It is not a look I see on dogs that are well treated.

I'm glad there's someone making sure former racers are no longer shot - a few years ago, that wasn't the case. But, I still believe they're abused, and I question what the guy can do for dogs that never officially make it to the track.

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[info]feoh
2008-10-24 07:03 pm UTC (link)
You mean dogs that are never registered to begin with? Sure, he can't track what he doesn't know about...

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[info]tfarrell
2008-10-24 06:49 pm UTC (link)
Dogs are not horses. Dogs do not naturally want to race in the manner in which they are made to do for gambling purposes. Therefore, they must be being treated in some manner which goes against their nature to make them do it. It is my understanding that the way they are taught is that they are partly starved and taught to follow some rapidly moving food.

The dogs are also not properly socialized: they are trained to race, not to socialize and play as would be natural to them. This is particularly true of greyhounds, who are (outside of those raised at a racetrack) actually the most gentle of all dogs according to a recent study on dog aggression.

While owners have an incentive to treat their dogs *somewhat* well, they also have the above mentioned incentives to not treat them *too* well. Also, as soon as the dog's race career is over (because it's too old, because it's just not a winner, because it broke a leg, whatever) the owner no longer has any incentive to care for them at all. Animal rescue organizations report abnormally high incidences of malnourished, unsocialized greyhounds turning up in areas surrounding dog tracks. And, owners frequently simply have former racers that are no longer making money put down, whether the dog is otherwise healthy or not. A bullet is cheaper than several years of dog food. Yes, they can simply put the dog up for adoption, and some do, but some can't be bothered to do so.

I plan to vote to ban dog racing. In my opinion, it is in itself a form of cruelty to dogs, and it leads to a lot of tangential additional cruelty to dogs.

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[info]feoh
2008-10-24 07:04 pm UTC (link)
Dogs may not naturally want to race, but they *DO* very much want to run.

I'm asking this only to enhance my understanding of the issue, not to argue - what is it about the way they're made to race at the track that is incompatible with their essential dog nature?

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[info]tfarrell
2008-10-24 07:52 pm UTC (link)
Dogs don't necessarily want to run down a track. They'll run to hunt, or they'll run to play, or they'll run to get somewhere. If they're playing, they don't do it in a straight line, they run in circles and curves and loops and zigzags in no particular direction. If they're running to get somewhere, they'll do so in a line, but it's always to a person they love or another dog, and they don't have that incentive at a track. That leaves hunting. Racing dogs are trained by their hunting instinct, and that means keeping them hungry, because a well fed dog is often (usually?) uninterested in hunting... at least, not enough to go to much of any effort for it.

What the humane society has to say about it

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[info]dougo
2008-10-24 07:17 pm UTC (link)
This is an extremely politically incorrect question, but here goes: even if it is inherently cruel to dogs, why should it be illegal?

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[info]feoh
2008-10-24 07:23 pm UTC (link)
Because it's already illegal to be cruel to animals:

http://www.mspca.org/site/PageServer?pagename=lawenforce_Animal_Cruelty_Laws

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[info]dougo
2008-10-24 07:34 pm UTC (link)
If it's already illegal, then why should there be a specific ban? If the legal definition of cruelty needs to be changed for dog racing to become illegal, or if that law is somehow not being enforced with respect to dog racing, then that should be the goal of a ballot initiative, not singling out one industry.

But really, my question was, why should animal cruelty be illegal? I'm not saying it shouldn't, I just think it's an interesting question to ask.

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[info]feoh
2008-10-24 07:43 pm UTC (link)
As to your first paragraph - don't ask me, I'm conflicted, that's why I wrote this to begin with!

As to why cruelty to animals should be illegal, I do think it's an interesting question, but one which leads to a conversational maze with many twisty passages, all alike.

My personal belief is that cruelty to animals should be illegal because we, as higher animals capable of understanding complexities like right and wrong, good and evil. We have a responsibility to not abuse that 'power' and to treat animals that are lower on the food chain and intelligence curve in ways consistent with how we ourselves would want to be treated should some alien race land tomorrow who viewed us in a similarly primitive way.

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[info]dougo
2008-10-24 07:48 pm UTC (link)
Doesn't that argument extend to slaughter of animals for food? Or even the use of pesticides to kill insects? What if the alien race views us as pests?

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[info]feoh
2008-10-24 07:55 pm UTC (link)
I am not skilled in debate, and will lose this battle in the end, but from my stand point there is such a thing as a 'food animal'. Below a certain point on the food chain / intelligence curve, the argument falls down.

Again, I've been down this road before, the superior debater won, so, you win :)

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[info]dougo
2008-10-24 08:16 pm UTC (link)
Sorry, I wasn't intending to debate you-- I replied to [info]tfarrell originally. But yeah, I should probably look elsewhere for an answer that makes sense to me.

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[info]feoh
2008-10-24 08:27 pm UTC (link)
Ah, sorry about that. I have been in something very much resembling this conversation with people who are very highly principled and are trying to convince me that eating meat is immoral, so that's where I was coming from here.

Although, I do suspect I won't be able to help you in sorting out this moral quandry, because for me it's fairly clear cut.

I recognize that my stance is in some respects intellectually flawed, but I feel pretty good about it anyway.

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[info]dougo
2008-10-24 08:31 pm UTC (link)
I guess I'm coming from the other side: I'm wondering if there's a principled way to argue that eating meat (and by extension, other forms of animal cruelty) is not immoral (or at least shouldn't be illegal). But it's taboo to even raise the issue.

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[info]feste_sylvain
2008-10-24 06:57 pm UTC (link)
I read and respect what [info]tfarrell says.

Perhaps out of ignorance, I do not see dog racing as inherently cruel to dogs. Dog-fighting obviously is.

But I also will not pretend that all racing dogs are being treated humanely. There are obviously some abuses going on; that abuse may even be wide-spread.

But my gut reaction is to come down like a ton of bricks on the abusers for the abuses, not to ban the sport itself.

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[info]tfarrell
2008-10-24 07:03 pm UTC (link)
I would like to be able to agree with you, but I feel that dog racing has gone on for far too long for me to believe that a crackdown is ever going to occur: if it ever was, it would have already. In my opinion the industry has demonstrated that it can not be trusted, and must be closed.

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[info]jmaziarz
2008-10-24 10:01 pm UTC (link)
Thank you for your opinion and information. I value it highly.

A note on what I'm replying to: your feeling that dog racing simply won't be changed to something more humane I find correct from what I see of human behavior. Nothing -- especially long standing institutionalized behavior -- changes without something radical and completely breaking. Even then, old ways of doing things and feelings stick around for centuries and more.

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[info]ninjarat
2008-10-27 03:03 pm UTC (link)
Racing is not inherently cruel, IMO. The cruelty comes in the form of dog owners mistreating dogs that fail to perform -- exactly the same way that racing horse owners do to horses that fail to perform. Racing animals are not well-treated to encourage them to race well; they are mistreated when they don't.

Call me selfish if you will, but I see the Question as a choice between people and dogs. People, myself included, win, so I will be voting against the ban.

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[info]feoh
2008-10-27 03:07 pm UTC (link)
You're not being selfish, you're weighing the pros and cons of the issue and voting accordingly - that's what you're SUPPOSED to do! :)

I'm not convinced that the racing itself or the conditioning necessary to make a dog race worthy are good for the dogs, so I will likely be voting in support of the ban.

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