Sorry, I know the polls are closed in Massachusetts, so it's a little late for my opinion. BUT, everyone here has made very valid points (excellent points actually, and ones I would probably have put forth as well).
I will say outright that I personally am against greyhound racing (the group I volunteer for is "officially" neutral, since we have to work with a lot of these breeders, some of whom are good people), and it's exactly because of points many of the ladies brought up above.
Greyhounds actually are crated for most of the day, but (most) GHs have a very low energy level, so it's not like the dog is manically trying to escape because it has pent up energy. A lot of people are really surprised when they hear this, but Greyhounds mostly like to lay around (preferably on your couch), and then sprint for a very short time. They aren't distance or endurance runners, so they don't have as high an energy level as you might expect from a Lab or something (although they do really benefit from a brisk 10-15 minute walk twice a day). The racing industry is usually regulated (to a point), but the culture around it is not. Racing is a business, and dogs are a commodity. As soon as they cease to become an asset, they need to be gotten rid of (somehow). That's where rescue groups come in. Prior to the 1980s, most hounds that could no longer race were euthenized, despite their dispositions and suitability for adoption--I think that just hadn't occurred to people. It is MUCH better now, but of course there aren't enough homes, and rescue groups can only do so much, so some great dogs probably do slip through the cracks. Some breeders will do everything in their power to place a dog, others won't. This isn't really something you can regulate--it isn't illegal to euthenize a healthy dog just because no one wants it (it happens in shelters all the time).
As far as some tracks owning dogs--I'm not *positive*, but I think it varies by track. The one that just closed in Corpus Christi may have owned some dogs, because they contacted us to take some of them because there was no place for them (not with breeders or anything). Many dogs live at the track (in crates), whether they are owned privately or not.
And as far as the dogs being happy and well cared for--well, it depends. It depends on the breeder, and whether the dog is a good racer or not. As Sarah says, when they can no longer race, or just aren't good at it, they're out. As a rescue group, we only get dogs that generally have good dispositions. I'm sure there are GHs out there that aren't so nice (just like most breeds), but the breeders don't offer those to us (luckily). They are probably euthenized. One thing that I have seen consistently with almost all our Greyhounds is that they have terrible teeth, and it's because handlers mix antibiotics in with their food to keep them healthy (pre-emptively combat disease since they are all housed together in close proximity). This weakens their teeth, and most older greyhounds have to have almost all of them removed due to rot.
In Texas, there is an awful offshoot industry called, "rabbit racing," which is illegal (but happens anyway). We get a lot of Saluki/Greyhound mixes which are used solely for rabbit running, which basically involved letting a rabbit loose at one end of a field, and the dogs loose at the other end and the first one to the rabbit wins (poor bunny). Some breeders will sell their "leftover" dogs to people who run these things (they will have a double tattoo in their ear) for breeding and racing, and almost all the dogs we have gotten who had previously been rabbit runners have been abused in some way. Or sometimes we find abandoned, tattooed greyhounds dumped on a country road somewhere, needing major medical attention. :'( Sorry, didn't mean to make people upset. Anyway, they have all turned into really happy stories. This is one of my favorite stories (WARNING: some of the photos are pretty graphic):
http://www.gpacentraltexas.org/lazarus.html
He was adopted by one of the vets who treated him, and his dad is now our organization treasurer.
Anyway, that was probably more information than you needed. If the dogs weren't just primarily treated as "things," then I probably wouldn't have such an issue with it, because Greyhounds DO love to run. But (generally speaking), breeding thousands of dogs to get a few champions and then getting rid of the leftovers is just something I can't get behind.
