It waswith a heavy heart that I opened this e-mail directing me to the list of the 185 missing greyhounds. The Arizona Department of Racing keeps saying 140 missing greyhounds. Here's the list. It's heart wrenching. (Adobe Acrobat required to read it.) 

Greyhounds are tattooed as a means of identification. The right ear 42B means the birthdate. So hound AC Galaxy Fogg was born April (4) 2002 (2), and B means he was the second dog of that particular litter.

The left ear tag is more telling. Go to Greyhound Data, do a "Dog Search," and enter the dog's name, gender, and birthdate 2OOX, and you'll get a big dossier on AC Galaxy Fogg. If you didn't know the dog's racing name, you could enter the tattoo.

As you can see, when the dogs are racing, they are heavily monitored and recorded. Once they are no longer profitable money machines, they get on trucks with strange guys and disappear.

It would be very cool if a link to their adoption group was posted on the dog search page, but the National Greyhound Association, the race tracks and the state departments of racing are not willing to put any effort into this.

All this available data, and Tucson Greyhound Park does a verbal agreement with some guy who previously drove greyhounds to their death in 1998 and doesn't keep any records? How convenient is that?

On the dog search page, the owner of AC Galaxy Fogg is Angelo or Christine Tedeschi. These folks have some other missing dogs. I wonder if the owners of these missing greyhounds are as outraged as I am. Since I don't hang out the same places they do (even online), I wouldn't know.

It doesn't seem like Tucson Greyhound Park is outraged. Who would know, as whenever a reporter tries to contact them, they are unavailable?

My wish for 2007 is to either close down Tucson Greyhound Park or make them accountable. Rick Favreau may be the guy getting all the heat, but in mind, he's only the hired gun. TGP pulled the trigger.

I pray to the Universe-at-large that no Tucson greyhounds go missing in 2007 and that the Department of Racing has enough funds to regularly make on-the-spot inspections (instead of giving TGP a heads-up first) and ensures that Tucson Greyhound Park has a verified plan in place to adopt out the dogs who are ready to retire.

To adopt a greyhound, visit Arizona Greyhound Rescue, Greyhound Adoption League or in Vail, Greyhounds2Go.