Ending Greyhound Racing: A Journey of Passion, Struggle and Triumph with the Founders of GREY2K USA Worldwide

I had the  incredible opportunity to speak with the founders of GREY2K USA Worldwide, a non-profit organization that has been a major force in the fight against commercial greyhound racing. Beginning as a modest grassroots effort, these passionate activists have made remarkable strides in bringing an end to most greyhound racing in the United States.
We discuss their life long commitment to ending this cruel sport and their new book  Brooklyn Goes Home a story  of how one greyhound sparked a movement to close the worst dog track in the world.

Useful Links:
https://www.grey2kusa.org/index.php
Brooklyn Goes Home - https://amzn.to/41qusYx

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:01

Well, I'm thrilled to have you on to share your mission and your story with my listeners. You are the co-founders of Grey 2K, which is a global nonprofit effort to end commercial Greyhound Racing globally, and you have been very successful in almost eradicating it in the United States. So that is. Your work is incredible, and I want to say that I know that Greyhound Racing has existed for quite some time, but it's not something that really has been on my radar as an animal welfare issue that I've been focused on. So I really appreciate you jumping on and educating me and educating my listeners and also sharing the inspiration behind your book Brooklyn goes home. So I'd love to just talk a little bit about your backgrounds and the personal journey that kind of led you to really making this a passion. Sure.

Speaker 2: 1:05

Yeah, we're both grateful to be on and really appreciate you taking the time to think about this issue and hear our story. Christine and I formed our nonprofit organization nearly a quarter century ago and since then we have been very blessed to work with a large grassroots coalition and other organizations and lawmakers to both reform Greyhound Racing but also to end it completely, and we have been relatively pretty successful. At its peak, there were nearly 70 operational dog tracks nationwide. There were well over 50,000 Greyhounds being bred a year and disposed of a year. There were about $3 billion bet on Greyhound Racing.

Speaker 2: 1:55

It was the sixth largest spectator sport in America and it was also very powerful politically. I mean, there were many states where literally Greyhound Racing interests were the most powerful force in the political process and, by contrast, today there are only two dog tracks left, both in the state of West Virginia. The company that owns that final two tracks once out of Greyhound Racing and said so publicly. There's a grassroots movement that is working to help these dogs and end Greyhound Racing all over the world. So this is something that has spread and really become a global movement and we are living through the end of this animal abuse industry, which is certainly good news for everyone who cares about dogs.

Speaker 1: 2:49

Absolutely, and do you. Is it forgive me, but is it just the financial aspect of it that keeps people so invested in this sport? I don't know how it works. Is it just purely greed?

Speaker 3: 3:05

Well, the interesting thing about Greyhound Racing or one of them is that it started as an illegal enterprise. There were scores of illegal dog tracks set up all across the United States the mobsters we know of from lore, bugsy, malone, all associated with dog racing because it was a great way to move money. And eventually these let's say gangsters convinced one state to legalize their activity, and that was the state of Florida. And the state of Florida said okay, we're going to let you have dog tracks or we're going to let you keep your dog tracks, as a matter of fact, but you have to give us a cut. So certainly, the legalization of dog racing came about because there was money needed by states during the Depression and this was a new source of revenue. Unfortunately, what wasn't calculated and couldn't be known at that time was that tens of thousands of Greyhounds, hundreds of thousands of Greyhounds, would suffer the consequences. A dog that slows down or ages out is a worthless dog. And they were simply disposed of. It wasn't until the late 1980s that someone started saying wait a minute, these are dogs, why aren't we adopting them? And the industry resisted, but then they realized it would be a good public relations move to support adoption. So the adoption movement did blossom, starting in the early 1990s, as these Greyhounds really came to be family friends just like any other dog. But the issue was that money could be made off of these dogs and that's what ignited dog racing.

Speaker 3: 4:54

And when we came along in the year 2000, 2001, a lot of folks doubted that we could make any kind of dent in this multi-million dollar industry where the track owners had a lot of political clout. But we set about to do it and the reason that we wanted to write our book was to inspire others to take on hard problems and try to make a difference. We continue to operate out of a one room office. We are fighting tracks around the world from this one room office with five desks that are circle, and if we can do it, I think others can make a difference in the causes that they care about. And our book is dedicated to Brooklyn because he's the dog that we rescued from a horrible dog track, a horrible Chinese dog track. He had no hope but we rescued him and closed down that track and he really has inspired us to keep fighting since the time that we took him in and expand our mission so that we can hopefully end dog racing worldwide.

Speaker 1: 6:04

That's fantastic. The work that you're doing is phenomenal. Where was the inspiration originally for Greyhound to save all these Greyhounds? Where was it in you? What did you have Greyhounds growing up? What was it that was?

Speaker 2: 6:19

really the. I know it's a different story for Christine and I have different paths on this, which is the case in so many ways. Writing book with Christine was wonderful, but it was also challenging, because if I see something as up, she'll see it as down, and similarly our backgrounds are very different. I was born into a family that had a lot of problems and challenges a lot of substance abuse, a lot of generational poverty and other issues and I had a mother who was very passionate about animal welfare issues and ran a local animal rights group in Portland, oregon, and so I was exposed to, as a teenager, a lot of these animal issues of our time and I came to view them as an urgent justice issue and I ended up being essentially recruited to be the spokesperson, for I was 22 years old for what turned out to be the very first serious challenge that animal movement had ever made to the Greyhound racing industry.

Speaker 2: 7:39

There were really fantastic grassroots efforts to help Greyhounds and combat Greyhound racing in the 80s and 90s, but they just couldn't quite. They never became a real political movement and in the state of Massachusetts around 1999, a group of particularly hardy activists, including Christine, really made the switch and decided to try to completely outlaw Greyhound racing in their own community, which, again, had never been seriously tried before. So in Massachusetts there's something called a ballot initiative process where, if you go out and collect a lot of signatures this is In the realm of animal advocacy. This is like Mount Everest. This is the most difficult thing you can do or one of them, certainly and you have to go out and collect hundreds of thousands of signatures in a very short period of time registered signatures of voters, not like an online petition, and if you do that, you can place a question before all the voters that says do you want to make this law or not? Most states don't have this, but some states across the country do have this process. So they went out and collected the signatures for a complete ban on Greyhound racing and I was brought in as the campaign spokesperson.

Speaker 2: 8:59

It was a very tough, nasty campaign, quite frankly, that the Greyhound racers fought against us. We was true grassroots effort and most of the established animal protection groups, in fact, including the national groups, were not enthusiastic about helping and we, sort of MacGyver style, pulled together a campaign and pulled together enough resources to at least get our message out to voters a little bit and the dog tracks spent millions against us. They had this ad campaign. The first ad was a police officer standing in front of his cruiser and he said I worked at the dog track for 20, 25 years and I never saw any animal to use. And we said, well, that's a good ad, it's very effective.

Speaker 2: 9:49

The second ad was a Catholic priest with the white collar and a greyhound and he said these people are lying, vote no. We said that's a really good ad. The third ad was a single mother with her children and Greyhound's in an open field behind her and she said if you pass this ballot question, we won't be able to feed my children. And the fourth ad was to pure attack ad, where they called us animal rights extremists, radicals and everything under the sunwires. And on the Friday for the election, christine and I and two other people were sued by one of the track owners for $10 million for defamation of characters. So it truly you know. You know taco being thrown into the fire. You were 22 this time.

Speaker 2: 10:34

Despite all that I was 22 at the time, yeah. And despite all of that, on election day, you know, we could all tell it was going to be close, and had the election happened on a Monday instead of a Wednesday, or a Monday or Wednesday instead of that Tuesday, we may well have won. But on election day on that Tuesday, we lost 5149 in one of the closest ballot questions in the history of the state, and that was a crushing defeat, one of the darkest days of my life. But over time, as the pain subsided and it was painful because we knew that because we had failed, dogs are going to suffer and die, dogs are going to continue to live in cages, right. Dogs are going to continue to be drugged because we had failed, and to live with that pain is. But over time we also began to realize that we had stood up to this incredibly powerful industry and taken its best shot and almost won for the dogs, and so that that was very empowering and that became the motivation to form a national nonprofit and continue fighting for these Greyhounds.

Speaker 2: 11:53

In the years since then I did make master level in chess, so I'm a strategy oriented person. Amazing, thank you. I'm very ambitious. I care very deeply about these dogs, and so I think that's what I brought to the table. But, like I said, you know what Christine brought and her story is. It's much better than mine, quite frankly, but it's also quite different.

Speaker 3: 12:19

Well, carrie's fur from the West Coast. I'm from the East Coast, I'm a Jersey girl and I'm very frank and direct and I don't waste time. So when I see a problem I want to solve it. So what brought me into this fight? From being an animal rights activist generally, I was active on so many different campaigns personally, against fur, against vivisection. I was out there with my sign, writing letters and that was my whole life. But then I found out about dog racing and in dog racing I saw many of the problems I was fighting all in one place in so many ways. For instance, the overpopulation problem. All the Greyhounds being bred and overbred for racing were contributing to the homeless animal population. The dogs were fed slaughterhouse scraps. So these slaughterhouses were making money off of the 4D meat that they couldn't sell for human consumption and selling it in big plastic bags to dog racing kennels. There were just over and over vivisection. These unwanted Greyhounds were sent to experimentation On and on.

Speaker 3: 13:35

I said, wow, this is a big problem. Why isn't somebody doing something about this? And luckily a friend of mine said well, there is something we can do. We're going to hold protests outside the track every weekend. Are you in? So I said, sure, I'm in. I did not realize that that wasn't necessarily going to move the needle and help and dog racing. It wasn't until we were doing this for quite a while that somebody came along and said you need to change the law, and that just made so much sense to me. And then I found out about the ballot process, which I didn't know about, being from New Jersey. We don't have it. So I said, oh, I'm in, let's collect the signatures and outlaw dog racing. I thought it was you know, you do this, you do that, you win. Well, we didn't know much about politics and we had to really learn as we went and learn by our mistakes, and sometimes the worst losses became the most beautiful victories.

Speaker 3: 14:37

And for me, my personal loss was when I was 26,. I had just graduated from college and I was walking with my dog crossing the street and we were run down by a speeding train and I should have died that day. But I believe my dog saved my life and when I came out of my coma I said to my family I'm going to help dogs. I owe something to dogs. Now, I didn't know what that meant actually, so it would take a few years, of course of rehabilitation before I was able to get out in the world again. And once I started looking at the problem of greyhound racing, I realized this was a problem that was in my own backyard 2,000 greyhounds suffering, living in tiny cages, being killed when they were no longer valued as money winners. And I said I'm in, I want to help. And I ended up going to law school so that I could learn the legal process and become the general counsel for our new organization, which we formed out of the loss of 2,000. We formed Grey2KUSA with the idea of ending dog racing nationwide that year. Now we aren't Grey2KUSA worldwide because the problem we realize has no borders.

Speaker 3: 16:01

But for me, I have a great deal of empathy for these poor dogs that suffer terrible injuries and nobody helps them. They're just killed. A broken leg's, a death sentence For me, all of the injuries I had. I had a team of doctors and months of care, emergency care surgeries. Everything was done to help me get back up on my feet and I said the dogs deserve the same respect, they deserve the same protection. So that's what really keeps me focused. Every day I think about the dogs and whenever I try to make a hard decision, it actually becomes very simple. I say, what would the dogs want? And it just. It makes our organizational decision making quite simple and direct.

Speaker 1: 16:50

Well, first of all, I'm so sorry that you went through such trauma in your life, and may I ask if your own personal dog survived, or has he been guiding you from above through this process?

Speaker 3: 17:06

In fact, my dog, whose name was Kelsey, did survive. She had a broken hip which was repaired, and we both went into a long period of rehabilitation and got well together. And, as I said, she taught me a lot, because she saved my life and I knew I had an obligation to keep trying to help dogs in some way, and it was in Kelsey's honor that I began this work with Carrie. And, by the way, kelsey was not a Greyhound, kelsey was a Black Russian terrier, about the opposite of the furry black dog.

Speaker 3: 17:51

But one of the key points we try to make is that Greyhounds are dogs. They aren't some special being that's different or better or lower, higher, lower than other dogs. They are just dogs and they deserve the same protections that a beagle or a poodle or whatever dog you might name, deserve and are guaranteed under the law. But the way that the laws have been written in this country, there are exceptions written for dogs used for racing, so they could be treated differently. So that's one of the things that we've tried to do along the way. We've tried to equalize the law to apply to Greyhounds.

Speaker 3: 18:31

And one of the important things we learned along the way like I said, we didn't know anything about the process. We were just completely greenhorns. We realized we had to take incremental steps to reach our goal. We had to realize that sometimes we were going to lose, but we had to get up and fight again because the dogs still needed us. The next day after we lost they were in the same horrible place and still needed to be helped. So it's because we've had the patience to work step by step, state by state, that we have been able to have some success.

Speaker 1: 19:09

Absolutely. That was going to be my question. So you just kind of attacked each state one by one and kind of we're able to change the laws in each state. Is that how that worked?

Speaker 2: 19:24

Yeah, I mean it was you know, it was a struggle and I think yeah yeah, I, ironically, the greatest tool we had was that we didn't know we were doing. And you know we really embraced our experience.

Speaker 1: 19:38

That's really helpful.

Speaker 2: 19:40

No, no, it really is like in anyone who see something in their community and wants to make and wants to make a change. You know, I would say that your greatest ally genuinely is is that you know you don't know how to do it. I mean because for us, you know, embracing our inexperience really forced us to try and and figure out this problem and Figure out how to attack it and how to. So, you know, it was a years-long process. I mean we, we ended up Sort of merging, you know, the grassroots activism which will always be our core and where we came from, with the modern political techniques and, you know, a lot of research. I mean, one of our goals was truly to Understand this industry even better than it knows itself. And then, you know, go forward and try to give the dogs a voice in in the, the legislative process and in the courts, in the media and, and just, you know, push and push and push and look, look for opportunities. And it was, it was a, it was a slow process. I mean we, we did a bunch of legislative work in the state of New Hampshire which, which was very Informative for us to took place over, you know, almost a decade, by six or eight years and that, you know, we just kept coming back to the legislature every year fighting subsidies, fighting, you know, tax breaks. The industry was getting trying to pass reforms and we and we just kept and our work, just kept building and building and you know, I think we Learned a lot of things that were surprising, you know.

Speaker 2: 21:20

I think that the value of Simply being at the right place at the right time, I mean, I think in a lot of ways we're living through, all of us, a Period when animal welfare is transcendent and and we're really, you know, they're riding that wave, and so, in the big picture, I think all of us, if we care about animals, are, in a sense, in the right place at the right time, because, you know, there's so many victories happening right now for animals that 20 or 30 years ago would have we would have thought were impossible. You know, and also I think we you know, when we started to research that the real history of Greyhound racing, which goes all the way back to the 20s and 30s, what we discovered was that the grassroots fight that that we had come out of wasn't the beginning of the story, that there had been very Rambunctious debates over Greyhound racing In the 20s and 30s and 40s and 50s, and I mean this was a, you know, a debate that had had taken place over Decades and generations, and so I think we, we became really grateful for the contributions of all those who preceded us in terms of doing this work. But more than anything, it was just to not give up. I mean, I, you know, christine's story is Truly a story of perseverance, you know, as is Brooklyn's story, and they will get into that. But you know, he, I think, personified Perseverance, maybe more than anyone. But you know, we really learned that that if you want to change the world, the number one secret is to never give up. And you're not gonna win every fight. You're gonna. You're gonna go through a lot of losses, but you have to always keep trying and always keep fighting and always keep believing in yourself. And if you can do that, if you can, if you can, you just never leave the field, then you know the power of everyday people really can win the day. I mean, I think the thing that is unique about our story In the animal movement, certainly, but also just in our, in our broader society is we fought a multi-billion dollar industry and one, and you know that I Think people today become so cynical about our democracy, and I understand why our democracy is is sick and a lot of ways is broken, and but it can still work.

Speaker 2: 23:52

And I think you know our fight for Greyhounds, which which was, by the way, very bipartisan, you know, and and crosses party lines, crosses ideology, crosses age, crosses gender. I mean, you know, it truly is like an equalizer across all aspects of our society. You know, our, our work is proof that, that the democracy can still work. So you know, and, and last thing I'll say is, you know, I think part of the reason for that is that Exploited industries like Greyhound racing contain within themselves the seeds of their own destruction. And so, you know, we were always just just trying to keep giving dogs a voice and keep fighting for them.

Speaker 1: 24:38

Thank you this is thank you for all that you've done, when you succeeded in closing down the industry, essentially in other than Virginia. What happens to those dogs?

Speaker 3: 24:52

Well, one of the most important things about our campaigns is that it's a full circle. When we, for instance, we brought a ballot question to Florida to close down 12 tracks, what we asked voters to do was to support a phase out of dog racing so that dogs could be adopted out on a rolling basis, and that's what happened. And what is beautiful about ending dog racing is these dogs become cause celeb and they it is actually hard to adopt a greyhound because everybody I want one of those dogs. And they become so popular that People actually, you know, get quite disappointed if they can't adopt a Miami dog or a Fort Lauderdale dog or whatever they had in their mind. So, instead of being a crisis, it's actually kind of a tug of war to place the dogs in good homes. And we are not an adoption group. We fund adoption groups. But we have strong alliances with these hardworking people who are on the ground taking the dogs in, and it isn't just a matter of picking them up and saying, okay, put them up for adoption after this.

Speaker 3: 26:06

These dogs need to be rehabilitated. They've had a very poor existence, low level of welfare and care at racing kennels. They live in stacked metal cages About 100 dogs per kettle in these dark warehouses and they spend very little time out of those cages. They're inside by themselves for 20 to 23 hours a day. They're let out to relieve themselves and basically what is a litter box for greyhounds? It's a small space outside the kennel building. It's enclosed, so it's just still outside outside and they pee in their poop and then they put them back in the cage. They don't walk dogs who are involved in racing other than to walk them out in front of the bedders right before the race. That's part of the whole process of the gamblers can take a look at the dogs and decide who they're going to bet on or whatever. It's quite atrocious and it's a really old fashioned way of gambling that certainly has lost its luster.

Speaker 3: 27:15

So one of the things that's been a positive for us is that other forms of gambling have certainly been in competition with old fashioned kind of dog racing. The cruelty of dog racing is much more well known than it was before States with dog racing. One of the things we did was we instituted record keeping laws so that people could decide for themselves. Well, do I think it's right that in Massachusetts a dog is injured every three days? Well, no, actually I don't. I don't like that's not a sport. Or in West Virginia right now, thousands of dogs have been injured since 2008, suffering broken backs, broken legs, broken necks Is this something that really we want to have in the 21st century? So the dogs can speak for themselves with their records?

Speaker 3: 28:08

So there's been increased education, the competition is certainly there, and even the track owners themselves are no longer interested in this old fashioned form of gambling. They'd rather move on to much more lucrative kinds of casino type gambling, which we are not an anti-gamely organization or a pro-gamely organization. We are an anti-dog racing organization. That's our one mission here is to end the cruelty of dog racing and I think, because we've been so focused, that's also been a great asset to our efforts. We're a small organization with one mission and we just don't let anybody get in our way about it.

Speaker 1: 28:57

So essentially the tracks have to be accountable for each and every dog and once you see that in real time, it kind of shifts people, it makes it a little bit more real and shifts people's perception of what's really going on Versus what they see in that moment in front of them when the dogs are racing right. And I think that's how we make it more human, we make it more. You know, these are living beings, living, feeling, sentient beings, and they're getting hurt every single day and being put in these situations, not just when it's right in front of you, but their entire lives essentially Also the records produced to the public show that Greyhounds are drugged to fix races.

Speaker 3: 29:43

So there's cheating going on. It's not even fair to the gamblers. So, from start to finish, you could say that dog racing hasn't really stepped too far away from its original criminal element. It's still what it always was. What we learned was that people understand this is no way to treat a dog, and these dogs can inspire people to come and do the right thing and vote for the dogs or contact their lawmakers to vote for the dogs. As Carrie said, only about half the states have the ballot question process. So we work through legislatures to end dog racing. And I tell you, when lawmakers love to go up and debate and say I'm voting for dogs, I like dogs. It makes them look good and it's a good thing to do. It makes them look good. That's what I'm going to say.

Speaker 3: 30:33

And you know, when we saw that picture of Brooklyn, this dog who was languishing at a Chinese dog track, there was just this magical moment. We were so transfixed. He was such an astounding looking dog, he inspired us. And Then we looked at his records. Then we came to understand how long he'd been there, where he came from, and we said we're gonna shut this place down, and it took eight years, but we were so inspired by this one dog and he became the ambassador for the other 600 dogs who are also at this terrible place called the canadrome. It was a place that had been racing dogs for decades, and About 400 dogs were shipped in from Australia each year to live and die at the canadrome.

Speaker 3: 31:29

And the canadrome is on Macau, which is a peninsula off the mainland China. It's kind of like the Las Vegas of China, because gambling is illegal on the mainland, but it was allowed on Macau and there was no adoption program at the canadrome. So every dog that went there died there, and our first step in the what we called the rescue Brooklyn campaign was to Ask the track to please start an adoption program. Very simple it refused. People held rallies all around the world candlelight rallies and vigils for this one dog, and Yet they would not be moved to create an adoption program.

Speaker 3: 32:15

So then we appealed to the government, we went to Macau, we talked with officials and we said this is a very, this is very bad for your reputation. Every month, 30 dogs were shipped in and 30 dogs on the property were killed to make a room. It was like clockwork and they kept very good records. They kept them on their website so it wasn't hard to see this was happening. So it was a terrible problem. It had been going on for decades and decades and it took us eight years to close that terrible place down. But with our allies Enema, macau and pet levy area, we not only closed down the dog track but we airlifted over Over 500 dogs the surviving dogs to safety, to adoption groups all across the world. So my feeling is, if we can close a Chinese dog track and save those dogs, anything's possible right, absolutely, and this was before like the advent of social media, wasn't it?

Speaker 1: 33:14

like before, like now, news spreads fast, it's easy to get you know, it's easy to get your message across quickly and into gain momentum quickly, and you were able to do this Really hands-on, grassroots right.

Speaker 2: 33:28

Yeah, well, I think that I think it was. It was because you know it became a worldwide issue. Because it was a worldwide issue in a sense. I mean, you know, brooklyn had been born in 2008 in Australia. He had Both of his parents were failed racers. They were chasing a bloodline of a champion dog and he raced for a short period of time. He did not perform well and then had been shipped off to the canadrome when he was still a young dog.

Speaker 2: 34:02

One of our board members went to the track, took a series of photographs and, as Christine said, you know, there was this very iconic Photograph that turned out to be of Brooklyn and when she came back and gave us her report, showed us the photos. We were just mesmerized by by this incredible, this incredible dog. And so, and all we had to go by in terms of identifying him was on his collar were three letters L, y, n, and you know, our research staff tried to find out who was this dog, and we their best guess was it was this dog named Brooklyn and, as Christine said, we then proceeded to lobby the government, but it took eight long years before the track was with finally shut down and, quite frankly, we thought Brooklyn had been killed. He wasn't racing, there was no information coming out about him and when the track finally closed and Our allies went in and and assess the 500 plus dogs that were there, brooklyn was still there and he was still alive. He'd been living in a cement cell essentially for eight long years and you know, he, after Christine and others, helped find homes for all of those dogs you know, to various places across the world.

Speaker 2: 35:17

Brooklyn did come home to Christine and I personally, and it was, it was just, I think, the most incredible experience of my life. Quite frankly, we we've had other companion animals, had had other dogs. You know we have bats and you know, obviously they all mean the world to us. But there was something Even beyond that. There was something unique about about this dog he was. He came to us Underweights, with missing teeth, with, you know, there's all sorts of issues, but he was none. Despite that, he was loving and Just the most gentle, sweet, you know, individual we had come across and we just loved him so, so much and he was only with us At our home and which really was the only home he had ever known for about three weeks when he started to limp and we took him to the vet and we got the worst possible diagnosis, which was that he did in fact have bone cancer. And we went forward with the amputation and with chemotherapy and the veterinarian said you know, you can hope for nine months, and that that it seemed Incredibly cruel that a dog who had suffered so much was probably the most well-known greyhound in the world because of his suffering when he finally found a home, would have such a short time left. But this dog would not give up. He ended up living after that diagnosis for three years.

Speaker 2: 37:02

He became within, yeah, at the the animal hospitals in the area. He became like the, the example of. You know they would say well, you know, your dog probably has about nine months, but there are dogs like Brooklyn that you know live a lot longer. So he became this example that the people would be told about. And he also later had what's called an FCE, which is a version of a spinal stroke. So we almost lost him a second time and he had to he. He became much less mobile. I had to take him out to relieve himself and, you know, he could walk, but he was sort of just like I, stumbled around a little bit.

Speaker 2: 37:42

But despite all of that, after everything he went through, he was the sweetest dog. When we came in, every day he would stand at the lobby of our building and wait for people to come in, and people would come in and rub his ears and he just everyone he met and came across he touched in this very special way. So I think for us, you know, first of all, that was like a reward. I mean, when we wrote the book, you know it wasn't well. We have this, this passion to write. You know that this, you know, for some ego purpose or it wasn't any of that. It was more that we live through this truly bizarre experience of being a part of a grassroots movement that took on the multi-billion dollar industry and won, and, and we thought that we owed it to the Greyhounds and to that fight and and to future generations to put that story on paper so people can can read it and take from it what they will. And I think you know Brooklyn was like. You know that, ironically, he was born.

Speaker 2: 38:56

So I mentioned at the beginning of the interview that very first campaign in Massachusetts that we lost. We come, we came back eight years later and in 2008 we brought our issue back to the voters in Massachusetts. We won Sweeping victory, you know, one by 12 percentage points, carried 12 to 14 counties. You know, and that was the first moment that the animal industry had really defeated the dog racing industry and two large, powerful dog tracks In Massachusetts were shuttered as a result and thousands of dogs were helped. Brooklyn was born only a few weeks after that incredible victory and before he passed.

Speaker 2: 39:41

In 2018, we passed a constitutional amendment in the state of Florida, where there were 12 operational dog tracks, more than 10,000 greyhounds suffering, you know, tracks that have been doing a billion dollars a year in business just by themselves at their peak.

Speaker 2: 39:58

You know, and, and you know, a constitutional amendment in 2018 to shut all of those dog tracks down. Past with a 69% vote, with the support of the most liberal members of the state legislature, the League of Women Voters. You know the Democratic gubernatorial candidate joining with Laura Trump, mike Huckabee, governor Rick Scott I mean this right left coalition that you don't see on anything. And so the end of Greyhound racing the United States really happened within the life of this one dog and he was such a sweet dog and when he passed Literally the the the entire Greyhound community across the world grieved. I mean, there were, there were vigils and walks and Obituaries were written and the South China Morning Post wrote an entire feature story in his passing and it you know. So he really became again such a personification of this movement and the desire to keep fighting, keep fighting and never give up. So I think, christine and I feel incredibly blessed to have been a part of this, so we felt an obligation to tell this strange story.

Speaker 3: 41:24

Oh I, you know everybody thinks their dog is special. You know, that's true, we know that.

Speaker 3: 41:31

And they are all special, but in their own unique way and they are all special, but there was really something magical about Brooklyn and he taught me so much. He suffered so much. Yeah, imagine living in a concrete cell for eight years and having no bed to sleep on and being fed slop and getting no medical care, just an isolation, and to think of that kind of existence and then to be shipped across the world to a place you don't know. This was one of the happiest dogs I've ever met. He I don't know if dogs can smile, but I can tell you he always seemed to be smiling and he had a very calming and a very mesmerizing effect on everyone he met Interesting, and I learned that. I learned a lot from him about patience and forgiveness. And you know, as I started out by saying, I'm a tough Jersey girl, but I'll tell you he made me step back and understand a little bit more about forgiveness and if Brooklyn can forgive how he was treated, then we can also take a step back and kind of let things go and focus on the good. And that's what he did. He lived every day with joy and every meal was a celebration, every walk was a celebration. He was wonderful, but you know, more than just being this super dog you know we could talk about for hours.

Speaker 3: 43:16

Yeah, I believe that Brooklyn and in fact, all Greyhounds are ambassadors for other animals in need, because people can feel and understand the plight of dogs.

Speaker 3: 43:31

It's very relatable and it's my hope that they might say and I know they do say well, if it's not right to keep a dog in a tiny cage for 20 to 23 hours a day, how is it right to keep chickens in battery cages or pigs in gestation crates? This confinement issue, the way that we control and confine other animals, is an essential problem about how we interact with other beings and the fact that this factory kind of mentality we have, this industrialization of other animals, actually comes back on us because it leads to environmental damage, pollution, all sorts of major problems with the environment because of these factory farms emitting fumes and methane into the air and destroying the groundwater. So I continue to be an animal advocate in every way and I try to live my life that way. But I think that if people can understand that the way these dogs are being treated is wrong, I think it will open their minds up to how other animals might also deserve to be helped right now.

Speaker 1: 44:51

Absolutely, and their hearts Absolutely. Thank you so much for sharing your story with us and your journey with us. How can we help support your efforts and continue to help support your efforts?

Speaker 2: 45:07

Yeah, well, I mean, first of all, I would encourage people to buy the book, to go to Amazon, order it because, and you know, I will definitely put a link in the show notes.

Speaker 2: 45:19

Thank you, thank you, and what I would say is you know, we wrote this because we want other people to make changes in society that they care about. I mean, we, the, the. The express purpose of this is to encourage others to be change agents, and you know so I hope there's something in this that people can take away that will help them do that. Also, you know, learn about the issue. Go to our website great, to KSAorg.

Speaker 2: 45:49

We have a federal bill to outlaw Greyhound Racing, which is pending in Congress, has a lot of support, which would would essentially close the door completely on Greyhound Racing in our country, and I would encourage folks to reach out to the congressman that represents you and ask them to cosponsor that bill. Again, there's details on our website and beyond that, you know, I would just say you know, have hope that that you know, listen to our story and have hope that you can make change on the issues that you care about. In fact, I think, if, if, if we stay on the field and continue to give a voice to the voice listening, continue to fight and believe in ourselves, that you know, change is inevitable. I really believe that.

Speaker 3: 46:41

I hope that people can feel inspired by the small success we've had in this one one area. But we're not done yet, far from it. Until the US Greyhound Protection Act passes into law, dog racing will still be legal in this country and in fact, like many things, dog racing has gone viral and it's in the virtual world. American gamblers can now use platforms to bet not only on the last two dog tracks here in the United States and West Virginia, but on races all around the world. So they are propping up the cruelty of Greyhound racing. That's occurring in Australia, the United Kingdom, et cetera.

Speaker 3: 47:24

Mexico, mexico, which is our neighbor, has one of the worst tracks, if not the worst track in the world Aqua Caliente, and American gamblers are propping that up by placing bets on these four dogs. So one of the goals of the US Greyhound Protection Act is not only to outlaw dog racing in our country, but we'd also prohibit American gamblers from betting on races taking place elsewhere, and it will prohibit the export of Greyhounds for racing elsewhere. So we're really trying to go full circle here and provide an example for the rest of the world. Greyhound racing is legal in six countries and the United Kingdom, so this American invention unfortunately has metastasized to other countries. In fact, in Australia there are 64 dog tracks, and every track there is because of us. It's because Americans invented this cruelty, and I believe it's our job to stop it.

Speaker 1: 48:27

Thank you. I will put links in the show notes to all the ways that we can help you. Anything else you guys want to add?

Speaker 2: 48:34

No, we're just thank you for what you do to bring attention to all of these issues and thank you for spending some time thinking about Greyhounds and hearing our story. Like I said, we're very grateful for the opportunity to talk to you today.

Speaker 3: 48:53

Thank you so much for having us. It's a pleasure and we really hope that we can be examples for others who want to take on big issues. And even if no one else is trying, they can try and they can make a difference. And that's what we've learned. You don't have to be the smartest person or the most adept person or the most skilled person. You can learn, you can grow and you can, and you can, in fact, make a difference. So that's what we hope people will take away from our story.

Speaker 1: 49:24

Thank you, thanks, you guys have a great day.