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As a party trick a friend — let's call him Jerry — used to screen what seemed at the time an amusing series of greyhound race videos.
''Watch the No. 8,'' he would say as the pink dog shot out of the box like a rocket and screamed around the track, the only danger being its momentum was so great it would miss the turn and slide off the track.
The punchline was this greyhound-turned-canine missile had been administered cocaine. ''Sunglasses and Panama hat and he would have been right at home in Hollywood,'' Jerry would say.
Rightly — in everyone's estimation including his own — Jerry was banned from training for ten years. Not because the stewards were immediately concerned about his dogs' treatment, but because Jerry bet too much. The welfare of the bookmaker rather than the greyhound was paramount.
The greyhound industry is reeling from the scandal of live baiting. Source: Supplied
Even 20 years ago watching Jerry's dishlicker videos seemed like viewing surveillance tape of an ancient underworld killing. It might not speak well of human nature. But there is something titillating about revisiting the seedier side of the past with the smug certainty provided by a brighter, cleaner world.
Now? After the gruesome footage of live baiting shown on Four Corners it is apparent greyhound racing's famously murky past is actually its abhorrent present.
Anyone faintly involved with greyhounds knew about live baiting. The long-held notion of the older-timers that a ''a dog needs to have a kill to chase'' was discussed — at least by the innocents — the way you might consider the use of leeches to cleanse the blood. Surely no one was still performing this barbaric ritual where dogs would rip apart animals limb for limb?
This is partly why the gruesome reality of the Four Corners footage was so disturbing. This was a practice so grotesque that, surely, it could only be part of the sport's medieval past.
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Images of small animals suffering agonising deaths revolted anyone with a skerrick of decency. Yet hundreds, perhaps thousands of greyhound trainers and owners will have spent the hours since the Four Corners expose considering — and trying to justify — their personal involvement in this primitive practice.
Inevitably the vested interests claimed live baiting was the work of a few rogues. But this notion was contradicted by the procession of owners who brought their dogs to tear apart rabbits, possums and piglets under the supervision of the barbarous track operators who revelled in their cruelty.
Taking a dog to be blooded seemed as routine for some as taking it to the vet to be inoculated. At least one owner thought watching a greyhound inflict a slow and painful death on a live animal was a great day out for the kids.
A screen grab from the shocking vision that aired on the ABC's Four Corners program about the illegal practice of live baiting. Source: Supplied
The same authorities allocated millions of dollars to police greyhound racing whined yesterday about their limited access to private property and other supposed obstacles. What the reason, if such institutionalised cruelty can happen under the noses of the watchdogs we can only assume it is rife throughout the industry until proven otherwise.
A desperate defence of the industry apologists was that only those winning regularly must be involved. But, of course, a significant proportion of the Tour de France peloton was doped up to its eyeballs. Not just cycling's top dog Lance Armstrong.
Greyhounds raced yesterday on nine Australian tracks from Gosford to Mandurah. Once you might have been impressed by these athletic canines whipping around the track. Now you wonder what dark initiation they have endured.
There was a strangely nostalgic tone to Jerry's video show because, you thought, you couldn't get away with that any more.
Now greyhound racing has lost all credibility. Keep the dogs in the kennel until the industries' scandalously shortsighted authorities clean up a mess that had to be exposed for them.
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