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Cover Stories Fall/Winter 2004 HBO Real Sports: Greyhound Racing Exposé New York: Following nearly six months of pre-production, including numerous interviews with supporters and opponents of greyhound racing nationwide, Emmy-award winning HBO Real Sports with Bryant Gumbel aired a segment on dog racing Nov. 23. The program had an estimated viewing audience of 5 million. In his introduction, Gumbel said: "We begin tonight with a fairly disturbing look at what happens to racing greyhounds when they are not fast enough to turn a profit on the track . . . In the real world there are too many dogs who can't cut it on the track, and too few places for them to go. And that's an equation with deadly consequences." The 15-minute segment included race footage; a breeding farm in Abilene; greyhounds in training and at auction; and several scenes of greyhounds being euthanized, then dumped into plastic bags before being hurled into dumpsters. Other highlights included file footage from May 2002 of Robert Rhodes demonstrating for reporters how he held the rifle when he shot thousands of greyhounds in the back of the head on his Alabama farm and how he used his knee to nudge them into the hole. Also shown were the exhumed bodies of some of those dogs. The interviews focused primarily on five individuals: Mary Butler, Greymeadow Kennel; Susan Netboy, Greyhound Protection League; Gary Guccione, National Greyhound Association; Bridget Cooper, who runs a greyhound adoption service in Florida; and an unidentified former trainer who was disguised for the interview to protect his identity. The following is an encapsulated version of those interviews: HBO correspondent Robert Goldberg visited the puppy kennel at the Greymeadow breeding farm in Abilene, Kansas run by Mary Butler. Goldberg, holding Revere, one of the 150 puppies born on the farm in 2004, asked Butler, "Is it every trainer's dream that they're going to raise the next Dan Marino or Joe Montana?" Butler responded, "We want them all to be stars. But there's always that one little step up. That superstar. Dan Marino." Goldberg asked Netboy why so many greyhounds are killed. "The excessive breeding of dogs is intrinsic to the racing industry," Netboy answered. You've got an eight-dog race, one primary winner. There have to be losers. There is no competition if there aren't losers." The scene changes to handlers off-loading greyhounds from a hauler. Goldberg narrates: "On a tip, Real Sports went to a veterinary clinic ten miles from a track [Mobile Greyhound Park] in Alabama." The dogs are walked behind a fence and "less than three minutes later the white greyhound with the brown spot is thrown into a dumpster. What we don't know is how the dogs are put down behind the fence. We do know that over the course of 30 minutes, 16 dogs were disposed of." Netboy comments, "There are thousands and thousands and thousands of greyhounds killed every year - it's unacceptable. They shouldn't be slaughtered en masse just because they are an inconvenience or a financial liability." Netboy said 17,500 greyhounds were killed in 2003. Guccione called Netboy's annual kill numbers "ridiculous" and said the number is closer to 3,500 to 4,500 a year. Guccione said that about 85 percent of racing dogs coming off the track are adopted or sent back to the farm for a breeding career. Goldberg asked the unidentified former trainer, "Is it just a business? The man said, "The lingo, the talk in the kennels is, if a dog is not running, if the dog's not making the grade, take it out back and kill it. They don't even consider them animals. They consider them gaming machines." The 15-minute segment ended with Bridget Cooper, who told Goldberg, "It's a waste of time arguing over how many are killed every year when the real problem is how many are born every year." Cooper said there are vast numbers of greyhounds and not enough people in the country to adopt them. "Unless there are better industry regulations to control the breeding, nothing will change." Goldberg, referring to the business of dog racing, said, "This sounds like any other athlete, if you don't produce for us on the field, you're out." Cooper responded, "But he lives. And he can find another job. A greyhound cannot." Editor's Note: According to state disposition records obtained by the Greyhound Protection League, 675 greyhounds were moved out of the kennels at Mobile Greyhound Park from January through May 2004. Of those, 28 were adopted, 325 were euthanized, 107 were sent to race at other tracks and 215 went back to the farm.
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