Friday Hound Blogging

You know, when we were putting the slip covers over the furniture and canceling the newspaper subscription here in the marbled halls of IM central, we really planned to walk away from our weekly trips to Overlandia. We mean, it is pretty obvious to anyone with the brains god gave wallpaper that greyhound racing is on the way out. Even some of the more sentient overlords are becoming aware that exploiting the innocent nature of the dogs to support their tick-like existence is coming to an end.

In fact, it's gotten so obvious that injuring and killing dogs for profit is a dead end scenario that even governments are getting involved. You've got to figure when a legislator, who usually spends his time protecting us from Sharia law, or Agenda 21 or making sure women have permission to make decisions about their bodies gets around to noticing your industry is a boil on the buttocks of society,  your contribution to the betterment of civilization has dropped somewhere just below the level of brain eating amoebas.

And when that state is West Virginia (motto: We Couldn't Even Come Up With A New Name For Our State) well, let's just say if there's anyone left on the planet that doesn't recognize the inherent barbarity, cruelty and inhumanity of your "sport" they have to be named either Gary Guccione, or Rory Goree.

So when we read that the state of West Virginia had finally decided that perhaps maybe it could be possible that conceivably greyhounds needed a little protection from the unique care and training practices of the overlords, we were intrigued and wondered what might be the source of this sudden epiphany.

Turns out there were three reasons: James Grace, James Bloom and Christopher Bever. Now, we here at IM Central can neither confirm, nor deny that Mr. Grace and Mr. Bloom have actual degrees in Veterinary Medicine, but we can certify that they have a rather unique way of treating greyhounds who happen to have broken a bone while providing the aforementioned individuals with trailer payments: aspirin. Mr. Bever, on the other hand employs some rather esoteric leash training methods which--and we apologize for having to use sophisticated dog training vocabulary here--are called jerk on the dog's leash and hit it in the face. You can see a video of Mr. Bever's work here.

Now we're sure some of you at home are thinking that seems like a pretty heartless way to treat a living creature, and that just shows how little you know about  the state of the art medical procedures and training techniques used by the overlords--who by the way care very deeply about their furry charges and view them as members of the family.

Luckily we have Sam Burdette with the West Virginia Greyhound Owners and Breeders Association to explain:

"All of a sudden you can have a dog fight there's nothing worse in the world than a dog fight. So, he acted quick, and a little bit rough I thought, but I understand why he reacted so quick. You're showing the dog what you want the dog to do and that's the way you handle dogs and the only way you can handle dogs.”

 So there you have it. A complete, succinct distillation of the training philosophies of  Victoria Stillwell, Paul Owens, Cesar Millan and Graham Bloem--if they were all on crack. Mr. Burdette, who by the way looks like the love child of the Stay Puft man and Mitch Mcconell, does admit that some people may not understand these highly technical procedures and he assured the public that he had "gratitude for the dogs that earn my living.”

Aspirins and gratitude, huh Major. Boy, it doesn't get much better than that. What's a slap in the face or a strained neck when you got all that going for you?

Major is a very happy and curious boy. He is on the go quite a bit as he has so much to investigate and learn about living in a home for the first time. Major is very friendly and loves to be around people. He loves to play with toys and is housebroken. Major will follow his foster mom and human foster sister around the house. He gets along with cats and large dogs but hasn't had a chance to meet any small dogs yet.  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.