Cruelty To Dogs Must Be Stopped

In spring 1987, when Coeur d’Alene businessman Duane Hagadone took his greyhound-and-pony show to Boise to promote dog racing, legislators were assured the dogs would be treated well.

Eight years later, those assurances ring hollow.

Now, there’s compelling evidence that greyhounds routinely are mistreated and slaughtered - sometimes callously. Trainer Larry Conarty, who calls Coeur d’Alene Greyhound Park “the Auschwitz of greyhound tracks,” says he saw three dogs electrocuted for sport while trainers sipped beer, smoked marijuana and snorted cocaine.

Conarty is one of 10 trainers and greyhound adoption agents who have come forward with serious eyewitness accounts: inhumane kennel conditions, veterinarian negligence and race-fixing by trainers.

The Idaho Department of Law Enforcement and the Oregon Racing Commission are investigating kennel owner/trainer Gary Burman. But more is needed. Idaho Gov. Phil Batt should demand an investigation of all charges, independent of the Idaho Racing Commission, which, critics claim, covers up for the track to protect its judges, veterinarians and racing interests.

Typically, track officials have dismissed the eyewitness accounts as sour grapes from former trainers. But Coeur d’Alene Greyhound Park - with its poor handle, purses and attendance - can’t deny its industrywide reputation as one of the nation’s worst tracks.

The low purses, according to critics, force trainers to cut corners. Dogs are jammed into cages so tightly that the big dogs can’t lie down. Trainers run injured animals to collect a $10 race supplement. Greyhounds often break legs and are destroyed because the track isn’t groomed properly.

Greyhound dog owners have killed thousands of dogs - some, according to trainers, by electrocution, while others have been bludgeoned with claw hammers, shot or had their throats cut.

Trainer Rory Bracken backed up his account of an electrocution by passing a lie-detector test. Steve Bergeron, the 1994 leading winner, claims in a three-page complaint: “I witnessed continuous and daily cruelty to greyhounds by most kennel personnel.”

Something stinks at Coeur d’Alene Greyhound Park, and it’s not just the dog droppings.

, DataTimes The following fields overflowed: CREDIT = D.F. Oliveria/For the editorial board