Poor rehoming record

A series of white papers by the Coalition for the Protection of Greyhounds provide the first insight into how poorly industry rehomers (GAPs) are performing compared to community-run rescues.

These papers collate annual data which show that the national rate of greyhound breeding continues to be about six times the racing industry’s capacity to rehome via its rehoming arm GAP. This reveals how lazy the industry is about rehoming all of its greyhounds. Sadly, the resulting overpopulation leads to the euthanasia of thousands of healthy, unwanted greyhounds every year.

Greyhounds as Pets (GAP) is the dog racing industry’s rehoming body in each state, except Queensland. Incredibly, the Queensland GAP is funded by taxpayer dollars. The racing industry uses GAPs to give the public the impression it cares about its greyhounds, but never reveals that it rejects the majority of dogs offered by trainers and owners.

Many greyhounds fail the GAP entry test because they’ve not been properly socialised by racing industry owners. The truth is that the GAPs only take the greyhounds that are easy to rehome because they don’t have racing injuries, aren’t timid, are younger and/or don’t have behaviour problems due to lack of socialisation. 

Many of these neglected greyhounds end up at community-run rescues where they are introduced to living as a pet, retrained if necessary and/or nursed back to health. Despite the racing industry’s big profits, rehoming by community volunteers leads the way in NSW, Victoria and Tasmania.

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This is an incredible achievement given that community-run groups operate without kennels – with one major exception – and rely on volunteers to take ex-racers into their own homes to be fostered. Without the hundreds of wonderful foster carers around this country, thousands more discarded ex-racers would be dead. 

 

Read about foster carers here.

Read about seniors who foster here.

CPG research shows that these volunteers undertake this work despite most of the greyhounds they receive from the racing industry being in poor condition and below the standard required by racing industry welfare codes. Watch a video about this research here.
While the effort by volunteer-run charities is excellent, many of them are now under serious strain and some are at crisis point. For years, these groups have been calling on state governments to divert some of the betting tax which is returned to dog racing and give it instead to these small, impoverished charities. Our governments have failed to listen to these pleas on behalf of ex-racing dogs. Both Australia’s major parties – the ALP and the Lib/Nat Coalition – are as bad as each other on this issue.
 
Overbreeding is the main contributor to the significant numbers of greyhounds discarded by the industry and in need of a home, usually because they’re not fast enough or have suffered a racing injury. This then overloads:
  • public and charity-run animal shelters,
  • community-run animal rescue groups,

all across Australia, instead of the dog racing industry caring for its own. Council shelters are funded by taxpayer dollars, while rescue groups are funded by donations. Yet, despite the dog racing industry’s profits, it still dumps discarded greyhounds on these overburdened facilities. Some find homes this way, some do not. 

The only real solutions to this situation are non-industry greyhound sanctuaries and breeding limits (referred to as breeding caps) which must be set by each state government.  Caps on breeding must be introduced to ensure that all dogs bred by the industry are able to live out their lives as pets at the end of their racing career. It’s also important that state governments stop the racing industry’s practice of giving away greyhounds for free on Gumtree – see Buddy’s story here.

Some related media coverage: