GREYHOUNDS, LOVE AND RESPECT
Love and respect are two ways of relating to greyhounds which distinguish us deeply from those who exploit them. The greyhound breeders who already start eliminating the ‘unsuitable’ ones as pups, those who kill them because too slow or due to injuries, those who keep them in cages nearly all day long, those who throw them away after little more than a year because they are no longer any good at hunting, those who make them live in holes in the ground: none of these people have the right to use those words. If they do, it’s because they have no sense of shame, or because they are liars, to themselves and to the outside world. If they use them it is because they have as little respect for the true meaning of words as they do for their dogs, which is none whatsoever.
Those who decide to rescue one of these dogs from death show that they are the better human beings, because they choose life and not death, and those who adopt a rescued greyhound choose a path of another kind too.
But to love and respect the greyhound that we have adopted is just a start; to love and respect our greyhound does not diminish the suffering of the tens of thousands of greyhounds who die every year, not in far away places but right here in Europe.
If you really want to love and respect your greyhounds properly, you need to go further and think about all the others who are not going to make it. If loving is taking care of another, you need to go beyond the gaze of just your own dog, you also need to take care of all of those who are destined to die, and you can only do that in one way: to take a step beyond just adopting and become in some way both a voice and a force in defense of greyhounds.
You can do that in many ways: by sharing far and wide full and truthful information about the causes of their exploitation and who is responsible for it, by helping groups and organisations who campaign on the ground against the racing industry and the galgueros, by remaining uncompromising in the face of those who agree to collaborate with the industry in exchange for a few peanuts, or by joining our association.
Those who adopt have made the choice to love their greyhound and possibly be open to understanding the causes of the suffering of these sensitive, living beings. The next step is to love them enough to go beyond adoption, until it all stops. And the next step again is to understand that the greatest demonstration of true love towards our dogs is to be uncompromising champions of their cause.
To save greyhounds it is necessary to go further than adoption and pleasant social walks and become activists in this struggle for civilisation and justice.
By Massimo Greco
Translated by Isobel Deeley
Tags: adopt greyhound, adotta un levriero, adozione levrieri, adozione levriero, antiracing, antiracing, antiracing @en, greyhound racing @en, greyhounds, levrieri, levriero, salvare levrieri