Dog racing is a bloodthirsty archaic amusement and gambling business, which is falsely referred to as 'sport', whereby dogs are overbred in order to create ultimate running machines.

It is very hard to accurately estimate the scope of the industry since the formal records are much lower than the actual numbers, however the rough estimations are that in the UK alone the bets sums up to about 2 billion pounds of worth and about 50,000 greyhound pups bred every year. In North America the bets sums up to an estimated $3 billion per year, raising $200 million in taxes and about 45,000 greyhound pups bred every year. About 25,000 more greyhound pups are bred to suffer in the Australian racing industry. The global estimation is that more than 150,000 greyhounds are bred every year. Some become new racing dogs and the ones who couldn’t keep paste with the intensive and injurious training, or found not fast enough under the industry’s horrid requirements, are used as breeding stock, as low quality racers in Asia, in some other entertainment industry or in a more likely scenario, get shot. The racing industry also sells thousands of dogs, considered unfit for racing, to laboratories. Thus, greyhound racing functions not only as a "sport" and gambling enterprise, but as a breeding facility for other cruel exploitation industries.

The racers are no more than a short-term investment for the racetrack promoters. Even the fastest dogs are only good for a few years in which they are expected to yield enough profit to make up for the cost of their food and housing.

On average, a revolving baseline of 1,000 dogs is required to sustain a mid-sized racetrack operation. New greyhounds are continually entering the system to replace greyhounds that grade-off due to injury, age or "poor" performance.

A Greyhound endures a life of confinement with up to 1,000 other dogs.
In the United States the dogs are kept in warehouse-style kennels in hundreds of stacked metal cages. In Britain the greyhounds are not kept at the tracks but in kennels of trainers so they also suffer from the routine transport to the racetracks.
Both types of kennels are made up of indoor crates stacked two levels high, with the females usually kept on the upper level, and males on the lower level. The typical size is about 1 meter deep by 90 centimeters high and only 80 centimeters wide. Large greyhounds cannot fully stand up in racetrack cages.

The greyhounds are imprisoned for about 20 hours a day. To prevent damage to the expensive "property" they are muzzled in the short times they are taken out of their crates, because the large number of unspayed and unneutered dogs thrust together often leads to fighting. To minimize daily chores, some trainers keep the dogs muzzled in their crates as well.

The "bedding" of the cages is shredded newspaper, a thin carpet or nothing.
The dogs who are permanently tethered are forced to urinate and defecate where they sleep, which conflicts with their natural instinct. Because the chained dogs are always close to their own fecal material, they can easily catch deadly parasitical diseases by stepping in their own waste. The ground within the dog's area may have a high concentration of parasite larvae. Even if the fecal matter is picked up, the area where the dog can move about becomes hard-packed dirt that carries the stench of his waste. The odor and the waste attract flies, which bite the dog's ears, often causing serious bloody wounds and permanent tissue damage.
Many tracks continue to use wooden crates which are perilous for fire and difficult to clean. The wood gets soaked with urine and feces and hence the dogs suffer from fleas, ticks, hookworms, tapeworms, whipworms and giardia. Many dogs have been found to carry several potentially serious tick-borne diseases (Canine Ehrlichiosis, Erlichia Equi, Canine Babesiosis, and Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever).

Crazy bored and depressed, constantly restrained and eager for some activity, the little puppies become alienated and aggressive dogs. This is the desirable character by the racing industry.

Puppies are sometimes purchased from the breeder by individual investors or a syndicate. Breeders tend to maintain ownership and racing privileges of their best racing stock for themselves. After training, successful greyhounds are leased out to kennel owners at a track. Occasionally, the breeder, trainer and kennel owner may be the same individual.

To qualify to race commercially, the dogs are entered in schooling races – usually at low-grade track where young dogs ultimately race against uncompetitive older dogs. Many dogs "wash out" at this point. If successful, the dogs are entered into initial "maiden races". They are then classified to race in categories typically D backwards through to A, with A being the top grade, then down again from A to D.
Usually if dogs do not finish in the top three positions in three consecutive races, they drop a grade. By failing at the bottom grade, they are considered "graded off". The dogs may be sent to a less competitive track, referred to in the industry as a low-rent-track.

Type of bets offered by the industry:

• Straight bet or Single or Win bet. This is the simplest and most common bet. You bet on a winner at given odds. You collect only if your chosen greyhound is the first across the finish line.
• Place. A wager for place means you collect if your selected greyhound finishes either first or second.
• Show. The third greyhound across the finish line. A wager to show means you collect if your selected greyhound finishes either first, second or third.
• Across The Board. You make three individual bets on one dog to Win, Place, and Show. If your selection wins, you collect on all three bets. If your selection runs second, you collect on Place and Show bets. If your selection runs third, you collect the Show bet. Your total wager will be three times the individual bet. For example; a $2 'Across The Board' bet would cost $6.
• Combination Bet. Combinations cover from two to four greyhounds to win in chosen order. (see following bets).
• Quiniela or Reverse Forecast (UK). A bet placed on two greyhounds to finish first and second in either order.
• Perfecta or Exacta or Straight Forecast (UK). A bet placed on two greyhounds but they must cross the finish line in exact chosen order.
• Trifecta or Tricast or Treble Forecast (UK). A bet placed on three greyhounds to cross the finish line in exact chosen order.
• Superfecta. A bet placed on four greyhounds to cross the finish line in exact chosen order.
• Twin Trifecta. A multiple pool bet. Two trifecta selections in two races. You select the winning Trifecta combination in one race and exchange that ticket for a second Trifecta in the following race. One-half of the net Twin Trifecta pool will be paid equally to winners of the first half when those tickets are presented to be exchanged. The remaining half of the pool, along with any carry over will be to winners of the second half. If no one selects the second half correctly, the pool is carried over to the next racing performance.
• Tri-Super. Similar to the Twin Trifecta. You select the winning Trifecta combination in one race and exchange that ticket for a Superfecta in the following race.
• Titanic Tri-Super. This operates the same as the Tri-Super, except you must correctly select the Trifecta combination in the 5th Race and the Superfecta in the 7th Race.
• Daily Double. Similar to an accumulator you select the winners of the first and second races on that day. You must place your bet before the start of the first race.
• Jackpot. Pick six winners in six races to share in a Jackpot prize. The rules and prizes will vary from race track to race track.
• Parlay or Accumulator. A multiple bet. A kind of 'let-it-ride' bet. Making simultaneous selections on two or more races with the intent of pressing the winnings of the first win on the bet of the following race selected, and so on. All the selections made must win for you to win the parlay. If a race is a tie, postponed or cancelled, your parlay is automatically reduced by one selection; a double parlay becomes a straight bet, a triple parlay becomes a double. A parlay bet can yield huge dividends if won.
• Pick 3. Picking the winners of three consecutive races.
• Pick 6. Picking the winners of six consecutive races.
As you can see the industry thought of and used every gambling aspect possible to make some more money on the dogs’ broken backs and injured legs

Tens of thousands of greyhounds move in and out of these tracks on a yearly basis.
Professional haulers transport large numbers of dogs from one racetrack to another, cramming them in crates for transport to the track, sometimes a hundred miles or more. Cross-country trips in unventilated, aluminum trailers or rental vans, without the proper air conditioning sometimes slowly kill them from heatstroke. Many suffer from malnutrition, dehydration, weight variation, and exhaustion.

In the race the dogs chase a mechanical lure, typically an artificial bone, which is called a hare. In the training period the lure is a real live animal.

Hundreds of thousand of animals such as rabbits, guinea pigs, possums and cats are murdered yearly during the training of greyhounds. Trainers use those animals as live bait, strongly urging the greyhounds to chase them around the track and allow them to catch and torture them.

Dogs that have no propensity to kill are placed in cages at close quarters with rabbits. The trainers then deny the dogs food, starving them until hunger drives them to kill their caged companions. In this way, trainers awaken bloodlust in dogs that are nonviolent by character.

A few states have outlawed the use of live animals in training. Yet many trainers manage to circumvent the law, and ship dogs out of state for live animal training and then ship them back.

Dogs which actually make it to the track experience suffering during their entire racing careers. The racing itself is cruel as greyhounds are not built to run on oval tracks which leads to frequent painful injuries. It has been estimated that greyhounds running on British tracks sustain more than 12,000 injuries every year and that 10% of dogs that race are already suffering from range of injuries, such as footpad abrasions, ligament strains, leg fractures, broken bones, broken toes, torn muscles, strained tendons and arthritic joints. Pile-ups are also frequent. Their muzzles prevent them from nibbling at insects that annoy them and from licking their own sores.

In general the most common injuries are bone fractures and soft tissue injuries. Other reported injuries include cardiac arrest, spontaneous seizures, sudden collapse before or after racing, spinal cord paralysis, severed tails, lacerated eyes, and puncture wounds.

At least 10,000 greyhounds “retire” from racing in Britain every year, at an average age of just 2½ years old. This is either because of injury or because they are adjudged to be no longer good enough to race. Very few make it to 4 years old. Most end up with heatstroke, heart attack, injuries, sickness and broken legs.

"It was my job to bathe them and treat their wounded claws. The claws could get pulled out as they were running and the dogs would come back in foaming at the mouth."

Some of the injured dogs are being injected with drugs to cover injuries whilst others are being pumped with performance enhancing drugs to fix races. Another form of drug use is to prevent the dogs from running on top form by using Cocaine for example, which is a stimulant in humans, but when the drug is mixed in with dogs’ food, their nervous system is overstimulated and the dogs become disorientated, thus gamblers can cash in by betting on the doped greyhounds to lose. Beta-blockers, heart drugs, chocolate and all kinds of amphetamines are also common in the industry.

"It was common to see cut ears, sprains, holes in faces, dropped muscles, ripped claws or toes torn open - all this happens in the race itself".

The few dogs that generate earnings, race until they are disposed of.
The others that don't earn their keep, are murdered, sold to research facilities, exported overseas, or simply abandoned. The most common method of killing is to shoot them but many are clubbed to death, or are deliberately drowned. In other cases, dogs have been wrapped in barbed wire, or had their legs set in concrete, injected with household cleaners resulting in excruciating death, starved to death, electrified, strangled, hanged or beaten to death. Some are just dumped in the road, where they are impounded and destroyed.
Greyhounds have been found shot and still alive in dumps and even buried alive with their ears cut off because owners can be identified by a serial number tattooed on the greyhounds’ ears.

Every year hundreds of "unwanted" greyhounds are shipped to Spain in appalling conditions to be used for racing or for hunting and coursing. Dogs, which turn out to be “no good“ for hunting, are often brutally disposed of by hanging.

The World Greyhound Racing Federation has begun to expand greyhound racing to Asia, countries such as Vietnam, Korea, India, China, Cambodia, and the Philippines. Most of these countries kill dogs for human consumption using cruel methods such as hanging the dogs by the throat and skinning them alive, then using a blowtorch to roast them. Many Koreans for example believe that the rush of adrenalin through the dogs’ body as they die in agony will increase human virility. Each year millions of dogs are electrocuted, strangled, skinned alive or bludgeoned to death in Asia. Enlarging the dog racing industry will make things even worse by making the dog meat trade more profitable as they will make more money on the expense of these poor creatures.