With the closure of Walthamstow Stadium last weekend – greyhounds have been hitting the headlines. Many journalists have chosen to go down the nostalgic route in their articles – lamenting the demise of the sport and reminiscing about the so called ‘glory days’ of dog racing. I would have preferred them to dedicate more column inches to considering the rehoming process that will follow the closure.

Last week I was in Ireland to talk to the Greyhound Industry about plans for changes to the rules governing greyhound racing in the UK and how we are hoping that they can contribute to better welfare for the dogs. I had never been involved in a video conferencing situation before and, call me old fashioned, but I think there is nothing like meeting people face to face, but it was a fascinating process!

The paucity of reliable numbers that the Industry has is always one that starts the welfare debate.   If you don’t know how many are bred, how they are bred and where they go to, it’s no basis for making plans to improve the situation.  So that is where we started and I believe we have set up a baseline to move forward.

It is wonderful that greyhounds remain in the public eye and our meeting coincided with the release of the names of those appointed to take over the management and running of the new Board, as proposed by Lord Donoughue.  It may sometimes feel like an uphill struggle but we’ll keep going.