GREYHOUND PUPPY AUCTIONS – Part 1

HAROLD’S CROSS STADIUM, DUBLIN

Wednesday 10th March 2004

Representatives from Greyhound Action Scotland and Advocates for Animals travelled to Dublin from Edinburgh to attend the greyhound sales. At the airport we me up with an independent greyhound and lurcher rescuer from the south of England.

First Impressions

On arrival at the stadium car park, the first thing that struck me was the appearance of some of the men hanging about – let’s just say you wouldn’t want to meet them in a dark alley!

Secondly, I noticed the vehicles parked there with small, metal trailers hitched to the back of them, used for transporting greyhounds. I thought this a pretty awful mode of transport for the dogs. It transpires that dogs have been known to die in these trailers from car exhaust fumes. Other greyhounds were in estate car boots, or in crates in the back of vans.

David Normiles

The lorry that David Normiles allegedly uses for transporting greyhounds to the Barcelona track in Spain – a fairly small white lorry with a navy blue covering – was also there and we parked next to it. The main job of Normiles is as a transporter of dogs to England for flapping tracks; but he is the only person who will transport dogs to Spain – 36 small bitches crammed into his van with no water or food or climate control or proper stops for all that distance.

Despite the combined ISPCA & RSPCA operation where he was stopped by the police recently, he is still transporting dogs to Spain in these conditions.

Cheap, small bitches are selected; small, so that they can get round the notoriously tight bends of the track at Barcelona. Cheap, because they are a disposable form of entertainment – the quality of the racing is not appreciated in Spain; rather, it is just the entertainment value and the betting.

No notification of whom buys what is given after the greyhound sales.

Quite frequently, the customs and officials at the ferry ports do not even know that Normiles has a load of dogs in the lorry (they think he’s going out empty), because the dogs are so heavily drugged prior to transport that they do not make a sound.

The crowd

Several men were standing about with their greyhounds. I was struck by the relatively small amount of people there; there couldn’t have been more than a hundred or so at the sales. The people were virtually all male – the few women there stood out. They seemed a mostly older age group (50+) of rough looking Irish men. There were some more smartly dressed men as well, and a few fathers there, who had taken sons along, as young as 5 years old. They were all there to buy and sell dogs.

Apart from our Rescue contact, who blended in posing as a buying trainer and got chatting to a few people, nobody tried to speak to us, although being a group of women, we must have stood out like a sore thumb.

One little old woman with a huge greyhound appeared.  She said she was training him from someone who races at Sunderland track.  We all started petting him.  She seemed a little perturbed by the fact that we were paying so much attention to him and said ‘e doesn’t get THAT at home’ quite seriously.  That was obvious to us.

The Kennel Block

We wandered into the kennel block (where the dogs are held before & after racing) to have a look. There were small, individual kennels (more the size of fairly small crates) solid metal cages, with small holes in the front door for ventilation. They reminded me of cloakroom lockers. Apparently these are good kennels by the standards of many racetracks.

Before the Trials

We bought a programme, which we would mark up during the trials, trying to identify which bitches may be sent to Spain from these sales. We hung around next to the track for a while – groups of men and dogs standing about in small clusters. None of these dogs displayed any of the excitement that the racers so often speak of; how many times have we heard the phrases “The dogs love racing; you should see their excitement when you pull up at the track and take them out of the car, and they know that they’re going to race!” There was no evidence of this. What struck me most profoundly throughout the day, was the complete lack of emotion in both the dogs and the people.

Of course, there were a few exceptions, but the majority of dogs were ‘glazed over’: numb, glassy eyed, quiet, detached, shut-off. Anyone who has an adopted greyhound will have seen this ‘numbness’ in their new dog for the first few weeks: well, this is exactly what they were like at the track too. The men paid no attention to the dogs at all, not even to check them over prior to the trials; they were completely ignored, no interaction or petting.

There was no interaction or acknowledgement between the various groups of dogs either; if they so much as look at each other on the track, they are disqualified for ‘fighting’. It was a bitterly cold day, but throughout the day, of the 100+ dogs that were there, I counted around 5 wearing kennel coats or jackets to keep them warm.

The Trials

The trials began – 106 greyhounds ran. For some reason, there were never more than 4 running in each trial and in a couple of trials toward the end of different distances, only 2 running against each other. The dogs get one trial each to prove their ability.  One of the buyers remarked that Harold’s Cross was a bad track – tight bends – and if a dog can run here, it can run anywhere.

Again, even as the dogs were led across the concourse and approached the traps, only a handful of them looked excited. Most just walked along with their owners like automatons. A few seemed reluctant to get into the trap and were pushed in. Once out of the traps, they all ran of course.

There were so many dogs, but a few stand out in my memory. One near the beginning was very, very slow – she must’ve been about 20 lengths behind the other dogs all the way round the track. I feel worried about that dog and was looking out for her at the sale, but she had been withdrawn, due to running so badly I suppose. The other that I remember was a tiny black bitch. She was so small. She came in last.

Several times, the dogs seemed to slip and almost fall at the first bend; eventually, one fell. The spectators gasped. He picked himself back up and continued running. They usually get up again & keep running, especially if only minor injuries, although even with broken limbs, they sometimes keep running, because they are concentrating so hard on the race. After the trial, the dog’s owner was checking him over for injuries. I do not know if there was any Vet in attendance at these trials. Certainly, no one else appeared at the trackside to look at the dog. A few other dogs seemed to run in an odd way; one not putting any pressure on a hind leg; one with a bent tail.

Whilst we were watching the trials, we got chatting to two buyers sitting near us; a father and son, both Dubliners. The son had been coming to the sales since he was 5 years old and now owned several racing dogs, which he kept in a shed in his garden. He didn’t look more than 17 years old, but as our Rescue contact remarked: “Owning greyhounds is like owning socks over here”.

 The Auction

The trials over, after a break for lunch,  the auction began.  There was an auction room in the stadium; a ring space where the dogs are led out individually by one of the two track handlers for ‘viewing’, whilst men seated on wooden benches or standing at the ringside bid on them. It was a horrible thing seeing the first few being sold like poor cows – but after the first few, my mind just shut off and became numb – until the terrified dogs came into the ring.

The Greyhounds’ Reactions

A small handful of the 106 dogs (about half a dozen maybe) appeared confident and happy; the vast majority were blank and dazed looking; several were terrified by this experience.

 One small brindle bitch, Bo, ‘freaked out’ when the steward went to check her ear tattoo. She reared up and twisted back, desperately trying to get away. She was extremely hand-shy; the only person in the entire place who seemed to show any kindness toward the dogs was one of the lead-outs, a young lad, who tried to reassure the frightened dogs with a pat on the head, but to little avail. Some of these scared dogs had to be virtually dragged into the ring, and were pulled into a kind of sitting position, since they did not want to budge. 

The brindle bitch cowered and no one bid on her. Distressed by Bo’s fear, we tried to negotiate with the owner outside to purchase her, but he insisted on €150 and wouldn’t take less. We couldn’t pay that, but spoke again to the young lad whom we had met during the trials. He had wanted to bid on the dog but his father had stopped him. He then went and bought the brindle bitch privately from the owner and we were relieved that she, at least, would not go to Barcelona and was with one of the ‘better’ ones. Subsequently, she was sold again at Peterborough auctions in April.

On the greyhound database, her breeder is listed as Vinnie Jones.

There was a series of dogs – two brindles and several black ones – which seemed very nervous in the ring: shaking, cowering, heads & tails right down. Some of these were bought, some not. With some of the unsold dogs (either because no-one bid or the reserve wasn’t met), deals are done ‘privately’ outside the auction room. Dogs and money change hands in the car park.

The Condition of the Greyhounds

All the dogs were fine weight-wise, but a lot had muzzling sores on their noses, bald patches and appeared depressed.

Prices

We bid on the dog that had fallen at his trial –the only bidder– but the reserve was not met by a €100 bid. We do not know what happened to him. The cheapest dogs went for around €150 and the most expensive €2200. The average price was around €300. Apparently, the dogs were much dearer than at previous Dublin sales that our contacts had attended, where many went for €50 in the sale room and as little as €10 in the car park. (The Dublin sales are supposedly the most prestigious in Ireland).

No wonder they are so disposable.

The black greyhounds, currently an unfashionable colour amongst the racers, are referred to as ‘bin-liners’ – because they are black and so disposable. 

At one point, I overheard a conversation between a man and a very respectable looking middle aged lady seated behind us. The lady’s husband was selling one of their dogs, which had made €700. The man asked “Are you happy with that then?” She replied “Oh yes, very pleased”. I was struck by the complete business-like callousness of this whole thing: one feels she might have been a little upset if she had sold a family heirloom or favourite antique at auction, but there were no such feelings for a living, breathing, feeling dog.

The Buyers

We noted several Scottish buyers there. A group of three men had been sitting behind us on the outbound flight from Edinburgh and had come to the sales. They purchased five dogs for flapping that would be taken to Edinburgh by a transporter guy who only transports dogs to Scotland.

The Sale Ends

Eventually, the sale ended. Most of the buyers had left around two thirds of the way through and in hindsight, I wish some of us had stayed in the car park to see what was going on there. When we got to the car park, almost all the trailers and transporters had gone and all that was left were several Mercedes Benz luxury saloons.

Conclusion – Dublin

All I kept thinking about during the auction was the dogs – and imagining my own greyhounds being traded like this.

We went back to the airport, feeling drained. At the time, it was not as distressing as I had expected it to be, but subsequently, the image of all those dogs kept going through my mind – wondering where they’ll end up, how they will be treated and what will happen to them next.

I left the sales with a real sense of how there are just so many cheap dogs that are seen as ‘worthless’ by the racing community. Worthless because they are not of high monetary value and worthless because they are just racing machines to them, not dogs. At this sale, I really got no sense or impression of a great love for the dogs themselves that some talk of. It was plain to see the truth of the matter that we all knew before hand – that in Ireland, where the vast majority are bred and reared, greyhounds are regarded as ‘live-stock’.

A couple of days later, I was walking my greyhounds when a stranger approached me, asking first if they were ‘rescue’ dogs. When I replied yes, he patted one and explained to me that his son had a rescue greyhound. He remarked “It takes a long time to get any emotion out of them. It’s a shame really, isn’t it?”

Through out the day at the auctions, looking into these poor hounds eyes, one poem written by a woman who has been to the greyhound auctions before kept coming to me.  This is the poem:

YOU DON'T KNOW.

My friend I often wonder as I see you waiting there.
Muzzled, sad and silent, as the hammer makes a roar.
Yet another chapter ended, another person there,
small cages in a different van, more lying on the floor.

A stranger holds your collar, no kindness in his eyes.
He doesn't see the loneliness, he doesn't feel your cries.

The brightness brings the howling, more eyes behind the wire.
All aching for an answer, it's good you don't know more.
For if you knew hugs and softness, of another life that's there,
your sadness would engulf you, your yearning even more.

If only I could show you, how your sadness is my core,
I'm crying too, I feel your pain, I'm trying to do more.
If you knew of other places, white coats, machines and more,
or of the pain under the Spanish sun, your suffering would be more.

You don't know of the others, the thousands and the score,
The men who killed your brothers, the dead behind the door.
They think your life is worthless, they're missing so much more.
The love and trust you shelter, would serve them so much more.

The day will come, I promise. when all gentle Greys are free.
Of the pain and sores and emptiness, with freedom to just 'be'.
Please know that some are fighting, to make the humans see.
Your brothers are already gone, but just lift your head, it's me.

You don't know yet my sad one, but I'm right beside you now.
With years of hope, and blankets, to wrap you in , just be.
A new life's just beginning, a soft bed waits you'll see.
I'm here to take you home with me, the future's hugs and me.

B.Wright.

[This was written after a visit to the Greyhound auctions in Dublin's Shelbourne Park Greyhound Track,2002]

Olga Ferguson

Amanda Wells

Greyhound Action Scotland