Tucson City Councilman Steve Kozachik reacts to the recent announcement from TGP manager Tom Taylor that the park was going all-male and ceasing anabolic steroid shots into female dogs with a call for support for the safety of the dogs. Perhaps recent coverage on the issue by Weekly World Central’s Tim Vanderpool has helped the park and area officials realize something has to give.
Steve K’s statement:
On Monday, September 17th, Tom Taylor, General Manager of Tucson Greyhound Park announced his intention to slowly turn the track into an all-male dog racing venue. He further committed to ceasing the administration of anabolic steroids into the female dogs. While those are important first steps in transforming the track from how it has historically operated, it also raises concerns.
What is paramount is the safety of the dogs. A very specific plan must be identified by Mr. Taylor by which the females are segregated as they are taken off from steroids. These are animals that have been given male hormones over time with the expressed intent of suppressing estrus. As soon as that is stopped, they will come into heat. The potential for aggressive behavior and injury in the kennels if the dogs are not separated by sex prior to cessation of the injections is real and predictable.
Track management and ownership must identify a clear path to either segregating the animals prior to taking them off from the hormones, or identifying an acceptable adoption alternative that will get the dogs into loving homes. We all recall the disappearance of 140 greyhounds from the track back in 2005-2006. The current visibility of the track and its issues with respect to steroids, licensing and the track racing conditions is a safeguard against a repeat of that occurrence.
I have confirmed, and Mr. Taylor has been advised that Greyhound Protection League has offered to work with TGP kennel operators to organize moving the female and/or retired male greyhounds to adoption groups. Greyhound Protection League successfully implemented such a rescue plan in Guam back in 2006. That program involved nearly 200 animals. The League has also offered to share in the expenses of transporting the dogs to adoption groups. To that end, they have already begun contacting over 40 Western States adoption groups and other interested parties.
Mr. Taylor and track ownership have maintained that the safety and health of the animals is their primary concern. They now have an opportunity to act affirmatively, either through segregation and cessation of injections under the close care of veterinarians, by accepting the offer of Greyhound Protection League and immediately beginning the process of adopting out the dogs in a very public and transparent manner, or some combination of the two.
The community is watching with great interest in how TGP responds.
This article appears in Sep 20-26, 2012.
No killing of girl puppies! that is totally going to happen to all those little girls gestating at the moment unless somebody heads it off.
They already kill most greyhounds as puppies. That’s part of the process of finding dogs that will win.
Anyone who has followed this issue for long knows Taylor is lying (again). They will continue to be shot up with steroids until they’re out the door, wherever that leads to.
Wow, is about all I can say, you people have no clue as to what you are talking about “They already kill most greyhounds as puppies. That’s part of the process of finding dogs that can win.” I feel I may be a dumber person now for reading that statement, where do you people come up with this? I really wish Oprah or the likes would come work in a kennel and/or farm with her camera crew for about 2 weeks and than dedicate a 2 hr show to here findings and experience, because it would sure be nice to actually have the public know how these animals are truly taken care of, instead of having to read such dumb statements by uninformed “sheep”, “saw it on the internet, has to be true” “my new boyfriend is a french model (seen that commercial)” like the comment in womens day by a lady the other day, “they kill 40,000 dogs a yr” WOW, how do we stay in business, we raise 26,000 a yr…….hmmmm another conspiracy. Absolutely AMAZES me when I read such drivel!! Can only hope that the general public has an IQ above 4 and laughs you idiots off!
Jamie Massey, since you know so much about the process in finding dogs that win, would you be so kind as to share with the rest of us exactly what the process is as far as registering the greyhounds with the NGA and the states Department of Agriculture, and at what age this must be done by, what age are they weaned, at what age they have to be tattooed, what age they begin training, what age they are taken out of the 3-400′ long runs and brought in to the kennel, please tell me you can answer these questions with all your extensive knowledge you must have, I mean, you must, you are smart enough to hide behind your computer and put into words such defamatory statements, so please enlighten us, Thanks in advance for your wealth of knowledge.
SARL your post would be much more convincing if you spent less time being sarcastic and belittling and showing some sort of link/evidence/argument.
Mr. Kozachik seems to be doing the responsible thing and monitoring the business, bringing in resources where they’re useful, and letting the business redeem itself (or crash and burn, we’ll see). The best thing for us to do is simply join him in his interest in oversight.
impulsenine, To what are you referring to for me to provide evidence or to convince you of, my first post said I may be a dumber person for reading that statement and I wish we could have a large public figure such as Oprah come actually gain the “facts” and “evidence that you refer to, and in my second post I asked Jamie Massey to explain to us the process of finding out what dogs that can run since she made such a blatant “that’s what they do” statement, so I am confused as to what you are referring to, also our business does not need “redemption” as you put it, it needs to have both sides of the story told with the real truths and facts that are twisted to suit others agendas, which is very hard to do, as we all know the pity, bleeding heart story is much more interesting for readers as one’s emotions are easy to prey upon, and you would rather read about the 1 terrible person and link an entire industry to his/her mis-deads and not hear about the 1000 other that are great. And as far as sarcasm goes, I do feel dumber for reading that, no sarcasm there! And instead of asking me the question, why not ask Jamie for his/her response to my question, that’s the one who made the blanket statement, oh I forgot there isn’t one, because that is a misleading and uneducated STUPID statement! no sarcasm there either!
And as “Wall Street” so perfectly put it “You stop telling lies about us….and we’ll stop telling the truth about you”
Her lack of citation is as damning to her argument as your lack of coherence is to yours.
All I’m sayin’ is that I’m glad that Mr. Kozachik is on the job.