Why should greyhounds have to earn their way to be pets? While other breeds are born into pet life.
The greyhound on the petition photo is Finn, my former foster dog, and he was almost completely blind. His trainers didn’t even realise he was blind, they just thought he was stupid. For people who supposedly love their dogs, how can you not notice something as blatant as his blindness. He would walk into walls and shelves, he had the blind shine to his eyes and was covered in scars from walking into objects, and yet his blindness went unnoticed. How is this acceptable?

~The greyhound racing industry has been under fire for decades for the abuse and culling of perfectly healthy dogs. On the track, dogs can suffer fatal injuries resulting in trackside euthenasia, and in 2012, Lynne Charlton from NZ Herald reported that ‘The Greyhound Protection League estimated there were over 10,000 missing greyhounds in New Zealand alone.’  

While most greyhound trainers love their dogs and treat them better than you would your children, there are always people who give the rest a bad rap. A video by British animator Kaya’s Kosmos, shows the brutal way greyhounds are ‘disposed of’ or treated after their racing careers in England. Often killed for no reason, or mistreated so badly death would be a gift. The video shows dogs being shot, having bottles thrown at them, being put in dog fights they would have no chance of winning, having their ears cut off and thrown into a field to die and tripping over on the track and breaking bones, or worse, their necks. While it is well known that the mistreatment of greyhounds in England is much more common and severe than in New Zealand, it is still an eye-opener to the brutality that these dogs have to face just because they are no longer ‘useful’ to humans. From this video, I genuinely think that this is an issue that just isn't talked about enough, these dogs are being treated so cruelly and inhumanely it’s a wonder the industry hasn't been shut down. 

On the track, the risks are just as awful, Lynne Charlton from NZ Herald says ‘many do not make it home as eager dogs maim and trip each other, collide and 'come together', get shunted sideways at 60km per hour, blow their toes, tear muscles, suffer severe cramping, tear themselves on lure cogs, and fracture hocks and legs on oval tracks that are good for viewing, but produce worse outcomes for the dogs. Trackside euthanasia usually follows.’ It’s also become common occurrence for perfectly healthy greyhounds to simply collapse after their race, and they just pass away from exhaustion.

Lynne Charlton also states that ‘Many other dogs disappear at around 3, 4 or 5 years of age, the top age for a racing dog. With The Greyhound Protection League estimating there were over 10,000 missing dogs in 2012. While the industry denies this and does not want to provide figures for what they claim are happily retired dogs living on people's couches, the CEO of Greyhound Racing New Zealand was quoted as saying, ‘For various reasons, there may be dogs that get put down because people don't have any use for them.’ These are living beings, not just toys to throw away when you're finished playing with them. The fact that the CEO of Greyhound Racing New Zealand said that they put down dogs because they ‘have no use for them’ is disgusting, you don’t just murder your employee because you don't have a use for them, you don't just kill innocent people because you have no use for them. They deserve life just as much as any other dog, just because you profited off them doesn't mean that they suddenly become useless when you don't need them anymore.