Help Greyhounds-Call Tallahassee

There are currently two bills sitting on lawmaker's desks in Tallahassee. These bills would bring The Sunshine State into the new millennium and leave the old ways behind. Currently, there are only seven states where greyhound racing is still ongoing. Sad to say, Florida is one of them. The rest of the country seems to know something Florida has yet to learn: Greyhound racing is a cruel and dying industry and Florida needs to get with the program, according to Grey2KUSA, a greyhound advocate group. Florida has the embarrassing distinction of being the state with the most greyhound tracks, 13 of 22 operational tracks in the United States are in Florida. It doesn't make good financial sense to keep these tracks open since gambling on dogs decreased by 57% since 2001 (source: grey2kusa.org). Why Florida is perpetuating this cruel industry is a mystery.

I know from personal experience greyhounds are gentle and sentient creatures. They are sensitive and emotional, just like any other dog. The fact that they have been turned into little more than a commodity doesn't make them less sentient. I think that sometimes humans have a tendency to think of greyhounds, and pit bulls too, for that matter, as dogs who don't really feel pain or emotion. We do this to steel ourselves against the onslaught of emotion and sadness we would experience should we let down that barrier and allow the feelings to come flooding in. It's the same thing meat eaters do. They are aware of the suffering and cruelty inherent in the meat industry, but they don't want to think about it. To do so would require a change in behavior, and we can't have that.

House Bill 641 and Senate Bill 382 would decouple live greyhound racing. Decoupling means that Florida would no longer have a mandatory racing requirement that forces greyhound tracks to offer live greyhound racing as a “loss leader” for other, more practical forms of gambling. Those tracks who want to do away with live greyhound racing in favor of more lucrative gambling practices such as casinos would be allowed to do so under the new laws. If passed, this legislation would save the lives of millions of greyhounds.