"I saw happy, romping puppies and obviously well-cared for young adults in training dragging their humans to the farmer's training track for a schooling run."

I adopted my first Greyhound in 1994, and became an adoption volunteer shortly after that. This was before there was any Greyhound information available on the internet, and so my views about racing were based largely on what I had read in anti-racing literature or saw on sensationalized TV pieces. As a result, I was convinced that the Greyhounds were mistreated while racing and I was definitely anti-racing.

When I adopted my second Greyhound about a year later, I found that she was as outgoing, sweet and easily handled as my first Greyhound. This didn't seem consistent with what I had been told about how Greyhounds were treated at the track. Both skeptical and curious by nature, I decided to look further into this seeming contradiction. I researched, as much as possible then, information about racing Greyhounds from all the "impartial" sources I could find. I found an address and phone number for a Greyhound breeder/farmer near Ocala, Florida and "cold called" him to ask if I could visit his facility on an upcoming business trip to Florida. He didn't hesitate and welcomed me to visit.

What I saw when I arrived didn't jibe at all with my preconceived notions. I saw happy, romping puppies and obviously well-cared for young adults in training dragging their humans to the farmer's training track for a schooling run. My skepticism about what I had been told grew.

The breeder gave me the names of several racing kennel operators at tracks in Florida and Alabama and referred me to those people in case I wanted an "inside" look at one or more racing kennels. I took him up on the offer and initially visited three kennels -- two in Alabama and one in Florida. Again, what I saw in the racing kennels was nothing like what I had been told about the lives racing Greyhounds lived -- all the dogs were healthy, happy and bursting with fitness and athletic vigor. I began to comprehend the differences between working dogs and pet dogs and how working dogs are fully engaged in what they were bred to do. In short, I felt like I had been lied to by the anti-racing groups whose literature I had read, and misled by the media pieces I had watched. Needless to say, I changed my stance on racing and decided that Greyhound racing had been untruthfully maligned.

Twenty-four years later, after having adopted many more former racers, helped found an adoption group, and visited all manner of farms, tracks and racing kennels, nothing I have seen has changed my view that there is nothing "cruel" or "inhumane" about Greyhound racing. It produces robustly healthy, genetically diverse dogs that make wonderful pets precisely because of the way they're bred, trained and treated while racing. For all these reasons, I support the continuation of Greyhound racing.

John Parker

Moreland, Georgia