UnNews:Greyhound racing 'needs change'
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| Greyhound racing 'needs change' | 
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27 November 2007
LONDON, England -- Lord Donoghue, a former farming minister and head of the policy unit at Downing Street, London, claims that greyhound racing “needs to change, as horse racing has” according to a peer reviewing the sport.
In the United Kingdom, Greyhound racing is the fourth most popular spectator sport behind football, tea drinking and horse racing as sport officials are attempting to make it number one. “Football in England is as good as dead and horse racing is losing popularity by the day”
Sport officials have a number of tough decisions to make, with the first and foremost being how to liven the sport up, but why should it have to? One greyhound spectator told UnNews: “There’s only so much excitement you can get from watching a bunch of dogs chasing a fake rabbit around a track”. “The British Greyhound Racing Board (BGRB) have previously tried to use real, live rabbits but animal protesters have since ruined the fun with that after they were publicly torn apart upon capture”.
In a new radical move to change the face of dog racing, officials are seeking to replace the greyhound with sheepdogs which will chase sheep around the track instead. Lord Donoghue told us: “Visitors to Britain travel to see sheepdog trials the length and breadth of the country. All that happens there is that the sheep end up in a pen and the dog and spectators get bored quickly”. “This new branch of dog racing would be a terrific mix of two traditional British sports which would bring the excitement back. Imagine the crowd going wild as the sheep runs for it’s life around the track. It would be like watching gladiators again! Can’t you just feel the buzz already?!”
Lord Donoghue also went on to mention that “with these new changes, the sport is starting to make an appearance in far eastern countries such as Korea where the crowd want blood, not so much a winner". “We hear reports that the winner goes through to the next round and that the losers end up on the dinner plate until there is only one champion dog left”. However, British laws may make this a difficult sport to set up at home, although there is support against the cruel treatment of greyhounds. One RSPCA spokesperson said “These animals belong in a good warm home with some kids and an open fireplace. They shouldn’t be locked up in kennels across the country. Sheepdogs on the other hand are seen as being working dogs so they’re the ones that should be involved in this sort of thing”
Sources[edit]
- BBC "Greyhound racing 'needs change'". BBC, November 27, 2007