Can Greyhound Racing Survive?
It’s mid-morning in the rural Manawatū. Gary Fredrickson is strolling through a gravel carpark adorned with a regal-looking wooden greyhound statue, a bounding black dog in tow. He’s a little puffed — his breath clouding the morning air — and so is the dog. “We’re running the pups this morning,” he says as he moves inside a small building, past a warren of dog toys, a table with bowls containing raw meat seasoned with supplements and kibble, and a cabinet of medical supplies, to a room with about eight kennels full of barking greyhounds. Fredrickson puts the black dog in one kennel, where he proceeds to gulp water from his bowl, and takes another out.
He heads back outside towards a long stretch of sand enclosed on all sides by green netting. A makeshift raceway. Fredrickson leads the dog, Toby, to a metal starting box about the size of a large suitcase and gently coaxes him in.
With a quiet, metallic thud, the door of the box springs open and Toby bursts forth, chasing after a plastic bag and stuffed toy tied on to a retractable cable. When he reaches the other end, roughly 100 metres away, I see Toby goofing off with his spoils. “Nailed it. Beautiful out of there,” Fredrickson says.
It keeps going like this for about half an hour, with dogs led in one at a time for a couple of runs each. For most of the pups, this is only their second time in the starting boxes. They’ve never seen a race track. In fact, they’ve never even left the area around Fredrickson’s property.
Fredrickson works well in excess of 70 hours a week training and looking after his dogs. This is what greyhound racing is. It’s a side to the sport the
