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Thanks Persphone, she was a sweetie and deserved it.

My little red cattle dog passed today. You had the first eight years of your life on a chain attached to a bare board kennel, with never a loving word said. The ground you spent that time on was grass-less. I bought you home and watched you grow through the new experiences you had. I will never forget you watching Roxie rolling on her back in the grass with a look of curiosity and puzzlement, then trying it yourself and doing again and again as you decided it really was one the fun things in life. Today was such a contrast emotionally from those days but at least the eight years you were with us enabled you to be a dog. We will miss you!

Yes you are probably right regarding assessments etc and I have seen dogs do wonderful things to/with these guys, but I think regular reviews would be absolutely essential.

Without wanting to sound mean, I hope they temperament test the kids also, when some people realize they cant do what they used to be able to do they can have an extinction burst and become violent even the most benign.

Yes it is good that people are concerned but when they are vigilante on a crusade it's nuisance at best.

Many years ago I had a stall set up at a million paws walk and underneath the table I had crate which my dog was in basking in the sun. This was before crates where common and the only people that really used them were show people and true dog people. I saw the local inspector making a hurried beeline toward me, he came around to where I was sitting, stood there and stared at my dog who was half asleep, she opened one of her eyes looked at him for a short time went meh and closed her eye again. I was asked quite abruptly "why is your dog in there", I replied "to keep the other not friendly dogs away from her". He asked "does she want to be in there" I opened the door she opened her eyes raised her head saw I was still seated, leadless, treatless and hadn't asked her to come out, so promptly put her head back down and closed her eyes. I looked at the dog that he had with him who was at the end of its lead tense tail up and constantly pacing as far as the lead would allow it and said " of all the dogs that are here she is the about the only truly relaxed one". With that he turned and walked away. Now while I don't read minds I think I would be fairly safe to say he came over with the intent to "have a go" at me about having my dog locked up in a cage, but he did see what Sasha was telling him.

They are fantastic at calming. Only the other day I was with a person who loading up to have a meltdown the moment I put the dogs lead in her hand her demeanour did a complete backflip, she ended up having a great day, magic!

Yes wastage is not nice terminology. The surplus Greys are now not"murdered" it is against the law to do so, unless a vet verifies that they should be due to injury and the vet has to do it and a report must be sent to the governing racing body of the state. A race dog has more interactions with people and other dogs on an average day than pets whose owners work. They are couch potatoes because that is the nature of the breed. They bred from because they are fast regardless of the anxiety/excitement levels. Prey drive is inspired visually or by noises or actions associated with that vision, just like the vision of ducks makes your dogs excited, the difference being the Greys get to go through the sequence of the fixed action pattern, unlike your dogs which remain frustrated, albeit with good reason.

For that very reason I (and I got strangers to) handled the pups ears, put up on tables etc before they were branded. The stewards always remarked how calm they were and afterwards I dont recall any having issues. Most came already branded and yes there were issues to be resolved, but I was fortunate that the majority were still young 3mths or so they did learn to accept it fortunately, as throughout their racing life they were going to have it done alot. The thing that used to bug me the most is the way they were generally handled, the guys were rough, not to be nasty, but just "that is how you do it, gotta show em who's boss" "gotta treat em rough or they wont cope with being knocked around in a race" That was what the guys had been taught, they believed they were doing the dogs a favor. That culture changed eventually thank goodness. Just going ot for minute have you had anything to do with corns?

Yes their social skills with other dogs are good but with many of the older pups that came to us that was where their social and other skills ended. Acceptance of and not enjoying being handled was a common problem, but as I said easily fixed due to their nature.

From the pet breeders I know the practises were worlds apart. This is why the rearing of greys has come under scrutiny with the changes that have been introduced into the industry. I changed some of our practises at the kennels years before the proverbial hit the fan in the industry by introducing aspects of the way pets are raised. According to the feedback we received the results were favourable, which is why my boss allowed me to do so.

*Sigh* probably, unfortunately.

I still would really like to know as to how many nasty greys she saw and how long for and what were the owners like. In the kennels I worked at we had dogs come from all over Australia and from many different trainers, breeders and rearers. You could tell the dogs that hadn't had the best life and one of the things that used to astound me was the great bounceback these dogs have, wallflowers would blossom, nervous wrecks would take on the world, with a little bit of encouragement and sensible handling, they are not hard dogs to train or convince they have got it wrong about whatever their issue was. I don't want to seem to be being nasty to the vet but I just still find it difficult to believe that a large proportion of her human aggro cases were greys. Maybe she was seeing a lot of dogs that had come from the same racing kennel??? One of the big revolving door training establishments, where if the dogs aren't an instant asset they're a liability and get treated accordingly.

I'm sorry to hear that it didn't work out for you, did you find a home for the grey?

I think that Greys being dangerous to small dogs cats etc does depend on what they are trained on to a great extent. I only ever used a toy and saw many dogs pass over rabbits that were closer to get the toy, one dog literally ran over the rabbits. When she saw the two rabbits her gait faulted for a couple of strides and then she continued on to get the toy which would have been easily a couple of hundred metres away and she certainly had high prey drive. Im not saying that all dogs would be like that but early learning certainly has a huge impact on how they think even with intrinsic behaviour. The crackdown on live baiting should be a good start to alleviating this problem. I know it had been illegal for a long time and was still practised but the 4 Corners report, the public outcry and the near closure of the industry has had a huge impact. I have only rehomed 20 or so dogs after they left our kennels and had gone to a trainer to race. All came straight from the track and all were easily rehomed in urban situations. I did keep in touch with the owners and not one had any animal or any other type of aggression issues. The dogs at the kennels were handled a lot though, my son who was quite young at the time was frequently with me at the kennels obviously he was always supervised when interacting with them but not once did I have any concerns when he was with them. I would NOT have allowed him to come to the kennels if I thought he may have got hurt in any way. 20 dogs is only a small sample but I handled over 700 dogs during my time at the kennels and can say there was only 1 dog who came to us with anything near what you would call an aggression issue and I would have not rehomed him even though he was great with us after a couple of weeks, my son was not allowed near him except when the dog was in his kennel, there were no issues the dog actually enjoyed my son talking to him as he would eagerly greet him when got to know him. The others I would have had no issues with rehoming as they presented while at the kennels. This why I really find it so hard to believe that people have been bitten badly enough to loose body parts or even just bitten which the vet in the article leads us to believe is a fairly common occurrence with Greys.