Greyhound Dog Racing Tips.
My friend,Willie and I were talking the other day about how often we've bet on a dog and had it get bumped by another dog, which is pretty discouraging. I said maybe it'd be a good idea if they disqualified dogs and changed the results of the race like they do for horse races. Willie is clearheaded, however, and he set me straight on that idea right away.
"Yeah, but then what about our dogs that come in because they bump another dog or another dog bumps a dog and they benefit? We'd lose those bets too."
As usual, Willie made a good point. Most greyhound races have one or two dogs who get into trouble or cause trouble. But, unlike at the horse track, it's not because their jockeys didn't control them properly. It's just because they're dogs and dogs bump each other. It's the nature of the beast as you'll know if you've ever thrown a tennis ball for more than one dog at a time.
People get so angry when dogs knock each other down and bump and "turn their heads" to nip each other (doesn't work with a muzzle, but they try anyhow), but that's what dogs do. It's just as much a part of a greyhound's makeup as running as fast as it can after anything that moves is.
Many years ago, at Lincoln Greyhound Park in RI, someone got the bright idea of using monkeys for jockeys on the dogs. Not only was it cruel and inhumane to both species, but it didn't work. You can't control monkeys any more than monkeys can control greyhounds. The idea was scrapped and the dogs were allowed to run as nature intended - free of all outside control.
When you think about it, in horse racing, it's not the horse that's penalized. It's the jockey. So disqualifying greyhounds wouldn't make sense, since they're not under anyone's control. And in some races, if you disqualified every dog who bumped another dog or went wide and took out the outside dogs, you wouldn't have any dogs left for Win, Place or Show.
Nope, Willie is right. Some bumping and blocking and shuffling is normal in dog racing, so we should just accept it and do the best we can to handicap around it by improving our handicapping skills.
Greyhound Dog Racing.