Friday Hound Blogging

Well, you know it has been fun. We've had a pretty good run here in the marbled halls of IM Central making fun of the overlords--not a challenging task mind you--but still, something to do while the Stoli chilled. But that's all over now. That ship has sailed. That train has left the station. That dog don't run no more, if fact, it's dead. Oh see, there we go again. And that's why the overlords have started their own blog, a blog which will

detail the half-truths and outright lies of the radical animal rights group Grey2k.

 Dang. And just when we'd been stocking up on the half truths. They go twice as far as the outright lies you know. More bang for your deceptive buck. OK, so you got us. What's your plan?

We have tried, too frequently, to be kind in the face of our attackers. We've tried to tell them the logic.

Oh tell it sister! Tell that logic! Get right up there in Satan's face and tell, tell, tell. Uh, we mean Grey2K's face that is. Tomato, tomahto. You can see how we could become confused. Anyway let's get us some TELLING going on up in here! Oops. Excuse us.  In a kindly way, of course.

We've tried to describe the very basis of everything we do.

OK, that part we got. It's all about the Benjamins, man.  The bread, bucks, clams, milk, dosh, dough, frogskins, duckets, greenbacks, scrilla, loot, bones, coin, folding stuff, honk, lolly, lettuce, filthy lucre, moolah, paper, that long green with a short future.

Surely, it is the dogs we love that are the foundation of the messages we carry.

Um...you're going to have to get logic to tell us that one again. The dogs are the foundation of the message you carry? Then why aren't you out there running around the track breaking your legs and fracturing your skulls and stuff?

They say we "torture" our racers, but we haven't it in us to torture the very people who call us names.

Wait. We're confused. Are you saying you torture your dogs because you can't get away with torturing the people who call you names?  Man. Whatever logic is telling us there, it must be speaking Chinese or something because we're just not getting the message.

We ARE our dogs!

Um...well, OK, but don't tell Ronnie Williams. At least not unless law enforcement is close by.

The paragraphs above are from Betty Zubritsky. She describes how we think & feel, most especially about the dogs. We live for the dogs; we die for the dogs.

 Yeah, uh...Betty? We're afraid you have that backwards. It's the dogs that die for you, both on the track and when they don't generate profit anymore. We can see how you might become confused, but there's an easy way to tell. See, at the end of the day, you're alive and they aren't. Hope we cleared that up.

Grey2K would have you believe that people enter into greyhound racing to kill dogs. They don't.

Right. You can't believe anything those animal rights wackos say. The fact that dogs are killed is just a side effect, a cost of doing business. You know, omelet, eggs. Stuff like that.

Grey2K would have you believe that the people involved in racing are only in it to make a buck, to exploit the dogs.  They aren't. Exploitation implies that the people involved in racing have no feelings for the dogs.

Oh yeah Betty! You go girl! Everybody knows the overlords have deep feelings for their dogs. Right up to the day the dogs stop making money and they kill them, sell them for medical research or dump them on a rescue group. God, where do these Grey2K people get the nerve?

Betty came into greyhounds when she met her first one in 1995. That chance encounter changed her life. At that time, Betty knew squat about racing. However, she saw the documentaries, the ones that showed the abuses, the horror stories, the media versions of greyhound racing that tugged at the heartstrings and opened up the wallets of the general public.

Wait. The media is showing versions of greyhound racing that opens up the wallets of the general public? We didn't know PBS was doing a pledge drive. What did she see, Sesame Street goes to Ebro or something?

With some prodding from 'pro-racing folks', Betty decided to do her own research on greyhound racing. She learned about the outdated video footage, much of which was from other countries and not the USA.

 Ha! Gotcha Grey2K meddlers. You want us to believe that this is from the Tucson track and it was filmed last summer, but upon closer examination Betty discovered that it was really made on a small island in the Caribbean in 1632. If you look closely you can see the masts of the pirate Blackbeard's ship in the background.

Betty took the lead and ran with it! She set off to learn the truth. She got a job on a greyhound farm in Abilene, KS.  She says this about her first employer, "Mary may not have been the most charming of employers (ok, she was a brute), but her dogs were meticulously tended. Her kennels were spotlessly clean. Her whelping stalls were even cleaner. The dogs were permitted to pounce us with wild abandon. No hand could be raised; no voice could be raised; no rake could be swung. Even swearing at them was a crime, punishable by....  well, there was a pretty stead turnover of help on that farm. But, the dogs were first.   THE DOGS WERE FIRST!"

 All righty then. Say Betty, would a car-maker take a sledge hammer to the new cars coming down the line? Would Sears toss your new washer dryer set out of the back of their delivery truck as they drove by your house? Would the sales person at J C Penny blow her nose on your new blouse before she put it in the bag? See, Mary's making the trailer payment with sales of these dogs, so she's not going to do anything to, you know, damage the merchandise. Just saying it isn't your strongest argument, that's all. What else you got?

After an 11 month stint on Mary's farm, she continued her research, finding a job at the track in Kansas City and staying there for 3 years.  In that time, she learned about keeping the kennels clean, keeping the turnouts peaceful and calming, and how to respect the dogs.

Umm...Betty? If Mary was a stickler about clean cages and stuff, but you apparently didn't learn about that until after you worked there, that might explain why she was such a brute as a boss. Just a thought.

She then moved on to the Woodlands racetrack. When The Woodlands closed, she went to "the Valley", Victoryland, Gulf Park, Jacksonville, Wheeling, and Southland.

OK, so far we've learned that Betty is a slow learner and she has trouble keeping a job.  When do we get to the "half-truths and outright lies of the radical animal rights group Grey2k?"

Betty states, "Simple logic describes that if I couldn't stumble on Greyhound abuse with that many venues on my resume, it's probably a very rare occurrence."

Oh, Jebus Betty, why didn't you say so? We see your problem. You've been working with simple logic which is Logic's second cousin, and frankly not the brightest bulb on the Logic family tree (hence the "simple") See,  if you'd been dealing with Logic, it would have told you you just committed the fallacy of faulty generalization, or maybe you could have just talked to Cathy Street who recently wrote on the Greyhounds Forever Facebook page:

Ya'll need to keep moving west on the Panhandle. PE is still euthanizing perfectly healthy dogs. We try to take every one of them but track politics betwn trainers makes that impossible for us. We also have more dogs than I'd like to think about that have just "dropped off the grid" No clue at all what happened to them, I have a guess but no proof.

Hey Connie, you ever run into Betty? Seems she's worked just about everyplace.

Bally’s Connie is a very friendly, loving, happy girl. She is a Velcro dog…she loves to follow her foster all over the house. She does fine with older children but needs supervision with younger children due to her excitability. She does well with the other dog in the home. She does not do well in the crate. She does very well on walks. Bally’s Connie would do well as an only dog or in a home with others. She would do well in a single family home or in a home with older children. For more information about this dog, and other rescued racing greyhounds looking for homes, go here. If you don't know about the plight of racing greyhounds go here.