Finding new homes for Birmingham Race Course’s greyhounds

Since late April, Jennifer Boswell has been to at least seven states, finding new homes for the more than 800 greyhounds that used to thrill and frustrate tense bettors at the Birmingham Race Course.

And more trips are in the offing before the summer is over. Boswell and others with the Alabama Greyhound Adoption Center have been hard at work, locating new owners, preparing dogs and transporting them to new lives away from the track.

“Once a greyhound gets into your heart, it’s pretty impossible to get them out,” Boswell said. “I don’t want to imagine myself without a greyhound.”

In late April, the Birmingham Race Course announced it would no longer have live greyhound racing, but would instead rely on simulcasting races from other venues. It was the last greyhound racing track still operating in Alabama, and one of the last in the U.S. The track closed in March due to coronavirus restrictions, but the races were discontinued due to “embarrassingly low” receipts in recent years, according to Kip Keefer, executive director of the Birmingham Racing Commission.

Dog racing has been declining in popularity nationally as a sport in recent years. While it remains legal in 10 states, it now takes place live in only five. West Virginia has two dog tracks, Iowa and Texas have one each. Florida has active tracks but a constitutional amendment is set to phase out commercial greyhound racing by 2021. The Arkansas Greyhound Kennel Association looks to cease racing by 2023. The ownership of the Birmingham race course has said it would like to eventually bring back live racing.

When the race course closed down its track operations, about 150 greyhounds went on to compete at tracks in Florida, West Virginia and elsewhere. Boswell said the Alabama center has relocated about 500 dogs since April, and still has more than 300 to go.

And the next few weeks look to be busy. Within the next week, she said, they plan to transport 46 to the Pacific Northwest, and 54 to groups along the East Coast. Demand is heavy, she said. Phone lines have been jammed, with those interested in adoption contacting the center through social media and setting up appointments.

“If our veterinarians were able to do them any faster, we’d have it all done by next month,” she said. “But even our vets can only go so fast.”

Since the track began, the work of the Alabama Greyhound Adoption Center has been to find new homes for retired dogs. This is not the first time the center has had a large relocation task. When Mobile Greyhound Park closed in 2017, the center had about 160 dogs to move. Over the past 24 years, she said, she has transported dogs to every state in the lower 48 except North Dakota, as well as locations in Canada. Boswell estimates that, since 1996, the center has placed between 13,000 to 14,000 dogs.

“You kind of stop counting after a while,” she said.

But this is the first time the center has had to find new homes in the midst of a global pandemic, which restricted travel, shuttered businesses and complicated the process of having each dog spayed or neutered. Consider just one trip to the West Coast had to be coordinated in order to find a stop along the way where dogs could rest. In one state, Boswell said, anyone coming in had to self-quarantine for 14 days.

“We’ve had to make sure that whichever route we go, that’s the safest one for us as well,” she said. “That’s a big challenge with all that America is facing.”

Boswell said the dogs are placed nationally - and locally - with owners and families that will appreciate the special challenges of a greyhound. The dogs are usually about two or three years old but can live 12 to 14 years. They can’t be left in un-fenced areas, as they will run off. And these are lithe, quick, independent dogs used to certain conditions - special diet, regular flea and tick prevention, heartworm monitoring.

And the center does its own work to make sure individual dogs will be compatible around families with children or other pets.

“We’re looking for responsible owners who have done their research on the breed,” she said. “So many people are wanting to adopt that have never owned a greyhound before. They have the misconception that they’re going to euthanized. We have a saying that they’re not rescue dogs, they’re just retired."

Boswell said her first encounter with greyhounds was through her godmother, who raised them. She thought they were "the most beautiful dog I’d ever seen.” She’s not sure what she’ll do when the last dog finds a home. And she hopes that the race course eventually revives live track racing.

“I know they’re cared for,” she said. “What other breed of dog sees a veternarian twice a week, has their beds made three times a day, are weighed the day before the race, to make sure they’re not gaining too much weight, or losing too much? It’s so extreme that these guys are spoiled. A lot of times, when they go into the new homes, they look at the food and are like, ‘Are you kidding me?’ It’s like getting McDonald’s when you’re used to Ruth’s Chris Steak.”

But at the same time, she has built relationships with what she calls the “greyhound nation" - people around the country who love the breed and care for the dogs.

"If our truck broke down, God forbid, in any part of the country, all I would have to do is call greyhound nation and say I need help, and it’s done. It’s taken care of. You don’t just adopt a greyhound. You become part of a family.

“It’s hard seeing an end to it,” she said.

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