Compassion News

Reading Counts Too

Following the closure of Reading greyhound racetrack, Greyhounds UK has tracked the fate of the former Reading racers.  The result of the analysis is available on the Greyhounds UK website.

Greyhounds UK also announced the results to the industry via a letter from Annette Crosbie to the Racing Post (8 April 2009).

Reading Counts Too

When I wrote to you in November about our analysis of the ex-Walthamstow dogs, I said we would do a similar analysis for Reading. Today Greyhounds UK has published on its web site its analysis of the greyhounds that ran at Reading shortly before it closed in mid-October, to identify how many dogs have gone on to establish stable lives elsewhere.

The data is on our web site www.greyhounds-UK.org, which has the facility to accept update information on any dog. This analysis concentrates on the 224 dogs of Reading attached trainers and is entirely factual. Like the Walthamstow analysis, it contains no judgements and uses only information publicly available or from anyone having direct knowledge of specific dogs.

The initial results of this analysis were passed to all relevant trainers, the GBGB, and the RGT, and any comments received have been included.

First, 104 (46%) of the dogs have definitely established stability elsewhere, including 17 retired/rehomed.

And none of the ex-Reading dogs has completely disappeared.

 However, 102 of the greyhounds (45%) have not clearly established new stable lives after Reading. They appeared briefly at other tracks, or trialled and didn't race, or have been declared safe by their owner or trainer but without independent verification.

As the GBGB presided over such a success as Walthamstow, why is Reading such a disappointment? Does the GBGB have less control over that track? Or was Walthamstow such a success for the dogs because we were all watching? Surely not.

 It is not difficult to track every dog: our analyses were done by one analyst in a few hours. The GBGB knows they can do this automatically using their dog and race databases – provided they have reliable tracking of dogs and 100% retirement recording. So it is good to see the GBGB in action improving recording of retirement and getting chipping underway.

Annette Crosbie

Greyhounds UK

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