Friday Hound Blogging

Good morning class. Today we are going to study overlord social structure. Now, to the untrained eye, overlords appear to be a rather homogeneous group of semi-sentient parasites occupying a unique, but completely superfluous niche in modern civilization, much like smallpox, a remnant of an earlier, less advanced age, soon to be relegated to the dustbin of history.

But upon closer examination we find that there are indeed gradations within what passes for overlord society which, while rapidly degrading much as a the fecund pools born of the gentle spring rains turn into the fetid, cracked, barren dry holes under the merciless summer sun, still retain enough recognizable structure for study.

And it is to that rapidly festering dry hole of a society that we now turn our attention. At the bottom of overlord society are the breeders. These are the people who supply the "product" to the greyhound exploitation...excuse us...greyhound racing industry. These breeders reside on what are called "Farms" but in actuality are nothing more than puppy mills protected by outdated and illogical regulations, which by the way is a hallmark of regulations in the entire greyhound racing industry.

After the breeders come the owners and trainers. It is possible for an owner to be a trainer and vis versa, but often an owner is someone with the mental acuity of tap water who has somehow been convinced that investing in a unit...excuse us again...investing in a racing greyhound will somehow produce a monetary return, but as we have learned it mostly produces pain and death for the greyhound. Trainers are the class of overlord who supposedly "work" to prepare the greyhound for life as a racing unit, although as they like to say when the inherent cruelty of their  industry is pointed out to them greyhounds are "born to run" and "love to run" which causes one to wonder why they need a trainer.

Next are the track operators. They sit atop the overlord hierarchy because they own the land upon which greyhound racing takes place. They rent space to the trainers to house the dogs while at the track and thus like the feudal lords of old, control the destinies of the peasant classes, in this case made up of the breeders, owners and trainers.

Now we have set the stage for the current state of affairs in greyhound racing, in which, if we may continue our analogy, the lords of the manor have espied greener pastures and are coming to see the peasants as an obstacle to its attainment.

These are unusual allies, an organization devoted to ending greyhound racing and the industry itself. But a group aiming to shut down greyhound tracks has joined with the track owners on a piece of legislation that has wide support.The bill would “decouple” greyhound racing from other forms of gambling. Howard Korman, head of the Jacksonville Kennel Club, said in an interview that he does not oppose the bill.

 So class, as you can see, just as the rise of the trade and merchant classes marked the end of feudal times in the middle ages, so the rise of the poker room and slot machine will make exploiting innocent living beings for profit--if we may be permitted a little punnery--marks the end of this  futile endeavor called greyhound racing.

Hey, come on Dropkick. That was funny. Why you looking at us like that?

Dropkick is a three year old girl who ran her races (all 31 of them) in Alabama. She was victorious once so, you know, early retirement and all that. For more information about these dogs, and other rescued racing greyhounds looking for homes, go here. If you don't know about the plight of racing greyhounds go here.