Canine specialist posts essay opposing New Zealand ban

New Zealand expert counters racing ban

A leading Canine Behaviour Practitioner in New Zealand has released an essay on why he is against the ban on greyhound racing in the country - exposing the many lies and myths spread by the antis.

A co-founder of the Canine Neuropark® Trust, Bono Beeler posted an in-depth article on on Facebook highlighting his many reasons as to why he strongly opposes the closure of the sport and the consequences of imminent ban.

In December last year, the New Zealand Government announced plans to ban greyhound racing and that they aim to end the sport on 31st July 2026.

Beeler says many people have approached him to say that he must be so happy that greyhound racing in New Zealand is set to be banned, and his answer to them is always swift: "No! I'm not happy about it! It is simply naive to think a racing ban would help or protect greyhounds.”

The full article can be found here, but we'll go through some of his main points and arguments against the ban.

Beeler makes his intentions clear from the start, explaining why he is against the ban and the negative long-term effects of a removal of greyhound racing.

First, you literally cull a healthy dog breed and more importantly, it tries to mould a breed physically prepared with fast-twitch muscle fibres and a brain wired to control its body's efficient metabolic processes to anticipate movement far away for innate purposes, incredibly fast action and behavioural plans, to a life as a ‘couch potato’, living in a ‘golden cage’, getting a walk a day on a short leash with maybe some off leash time. Not to mention the possibility that the greyhound may then be bred outside the regulated industry and buggered up, just as so many pet dog breeds are, with all sort of exaggerated body shapes and genetic diseases, and then discarded by pet owners, as thousands of pet dogs are every day.

Beeler goes on to highlight how the ban opens the reality of this unique breed ending up in uneducated hands and the loss of all the specialist knowledge of greyhounds that currently exists within the sport.

Further, these dogs are often rehomed to people who do not know who greyhounds are but think they do from friends or social media, dog trainers etc. The most valuable knowledge comes from, and is shared with the adopters by, greyhound trainers and staff within GRNZ Great Mates adoption program who work with this breed every day. They breed them, rear and bring them up, are part of their development, work with them on every level day in, day out controlled by tight regulatory rules. When one adopts a greyhound, one adopts a community. With a ban, eventually all this - the breed, the knowledge and the community, will all be lost.

As anyone involved in greyhound racing will tell you, to say they are forced to race utterly absurd and Beeler is keen to stress this point in his article.

To claim a greyhound, or any dog for that matter, is made to do anything, especially to run, is against any physical preparation of these animals. What humans do, however, is to come up with all sorts of aversive devises to stop dogs from pulling and chasing away from us, until the aversive is removed and instinctive drift sets in. No, a greyhound doesn't run after a lure because it is made to, but because it is prepared to chase moving things because it feels good. It has to, with all of who it is.

As we at Greyhound Racing UK have highlighted on many occasions, including in a recent reply to Animal Aid’s propaganda, there is a risk of injury to all dogs, not just racing greyhounds, and this is something that goes unmentioned by those against the sport.

Good welfare is not just about making laws to provide for the needs of an animal, but provide the opportunities for them to express their naturally prepared habits as safely as possible. And sorry, in life there is no ‘zero risk’. Where there is movement, there is risk of injury, illness or death, but also efficient survival opportunities. Greyhound racing is still safer than a couple of dogs chasing each other in a public dog park on unlevel surfaces. Or dogs chasing tennis balls for 20 minutes several days per week. The reason nobody ever talks about the injury rates of pet dogs is because there are no official, population-based research statistics of injury or death rates of pet dogs, apart from a few studies of injury types and rates of insured pet dogs, and euthanasia rates in NZ, some councils publish in the media.

Beeler expands further on this area with some good examples and an excellent comparison to racing under regulated conditions.

All my greyhounds I live with and have lived with have ‘hackled’ each other, chasing each other down enclosed groomed fields. Why? Because it feels good, it's the relief movement brings. Often those chasing actions resulted in scratches, sprains and even a degloved tail. I have been fortunate to not have had any collisions. And when they run in a group, there is no chance that you can stop them, in a kind and safe way, until they are done with that game. All prepared (natural) hunting behaviours are expressed by racing greyhounds on a well-groomed race track, within a regulated industry. It's much safer than even on a groomed field - why would it be smart to ban that?!

Beeler then takes aim at the lucrative pet industry and many of the harmful products widely purchased by owners with no comebacks from the public, while greyhound racing is not judged with the same moral compass.

Today's billion dollar-plus pet industry is riddled with outdated, so called ‘evidence based’ information, like quadrants sold as learning theory, behaviour issues linked to all sort of inferred past trauma, single chemicals like cortisol, oxytocin, serotonin, dopamine etc,. correlated with one to one emotional reward and other behaviour states. Not to mention all the training gadgets sold as quick fixes for behaviours humans create and then categorise as issues, all of which can easily cause at least musculoskeletal disfunction and in some cases, skin and more serious injuries. The public has no problems with these gadgets easily available in stores, or some of the training methods used, and the behaviour myths taught which do cause injuries which are often undiagnosed and left untreated. None!

Yet, they have an issue with greyhounds being bred, reared, brought up, trained to speed out of a start box cleanly to chase that lure in a well regulated industry, because there is the risk of injury.

The behaviour of retired racing greyhounds in their new homes is often, incorrectly, described as showing past trauma, when that is not the case, as Beeler explains.

Rehomed greyhounds are often called rescues, and said to be timid or spooked due to past trauma and not being well socialised. However, in reality, they have learned ‘dog interaction manners’, meaning they learned how to interact with other dogs safely and calmly, by having socialised in a dog-related world, staying with their littermates for up to a year, moving freely in paddocks, being driven around to go to racing meets, getting different exercises every day, being massaged, getting hydrotherapy, a nutritional and well-balanced diet, seeing vets more often then other breeds not just for issues but check ups, vaccinations etc. Also, they often get socialised to children and other animals very early on during puppy hood and habitualised to many human-made objects that pet dogs rarely get into contact with.

Beeler sums up is detailed and well-argued case by bringing the lack of injury data on pet dogs to light and how greyhound racing is unfairly beaten by the stick of providing accurate and transparent statistics on this area

Many claim injury, death, general welfare, traumatic experiences are acceptable for reasons banning greyhound racing, without taking relational information into account for such claims. I absolutely believe in welfare regulations and tracks that bring those risks of injury down in the greyhound racing sport, and to be clear, in animal sports pet dogs participate in generally.

I'd claim that we should take greyhound racing's positive welfare evolution in the last few years as an example of what good regulation and the control of regulatory standards by an official government agency can change in reduction of injury and euthanasia rates, especially in pet dogs. That is where our attention, and certainly the attention of politicians, should be, not by banning sports without comparison of all relational information. 

If we ban or deregulate industries, we don't change injury or euthanasia rates, we actually provide an unregulated environment where injury and euthanasia rates increase but are not perceived to because they are not reported, thus no official statistics of injuries and euthanasia rates are then available to make better welfare decisions. In reality, bans do not address welfare issues - politicians use bans to look as though they do something meaningful to gain your vote!