Going to the Dogs
Taw grass of the race-track glows a bright emerald 1 . under its brilliant arch of lamps—a luminous ribbon encircling an oval of dark turf where there is only- the dimness of a June twilight, and no stir. The far side of the stadium is indistinct and empty—empty not-because London has been slow in welcoming its first electric hare on the White City track, but only because to-night the races are not to be open to the public—and as one watches the dogs, lean, rippling, delicious creatures in their red and yellow and blue jackets, being walked to the starting- box by their trainers, it is easy to understand wherein the fascination of this new sport lies. It is a clean sport, of course, a sport without murder, and that counts for .much ; it also provides about as exciting and (relatively) harmless a medium for getting rid- of one's money as can be imagined, whilst treated simply as an entertainment it is as cheap as the cinema and much more healthy ; but there is something in it beyond all this, less easily defined, of which every onlooker must surely be aware —particularly when the races are run in the twilight, as they frequently must be, or at night. The whole thing is so astonishingly fantastic.
This cannot, I think, be entirely due to the clement of novelty in the sport. A single greyhound going at full speed—that is, something well over thirty miles per hour (the hare may go up to fifty)—is a very graceful sight, but six greyhounds going all out after a flying cloud of blue asteroids—for that is all one sees of the hare when it is on the far side of the track—is more than a graceful sight ; it is a thoroughly exhilarating one. If you have five shillings on Silver Arrow, or whatever the name of your particular fancy may be, it is a sight to hold the attention as few spectacles can, whether in sport or in anything else. - The greyhounds themselves are in "a yelping of excite- ment " from the time the first hum of tlie,ir quarry's machinery is audible till the lid of their subdivided mouse- trap flies up to release them. The hare, which has been hacked out of its hole and sent for a preliminary run round the track, is rocking along on its rail like the Flying Scotsman by the time it flashes' abreast of the starting- box, but it has hardly reached the control-tower twenty or so yards further on before six frantic, leaping forms, each a streak of bright colour with its distinguishing coat, arc on its heels. 'If there are hurdles to be negotiated— and a greyhound takes a hurdle as a swallow skims over a housetop—the hare, being a thoroughly underhand creature in every way, flicks through a gate, which is closed immediately after its passage, and so gets home, as usual, length on length ahead of its pursuers.
Once or twice, in the earlier races at Manchester, the hare was " caught " ; on one occasion the leading dog overtook it, snapped at it, and was hurt, as well as baffled at the animal's indifference ; in another race a dog had its leg broken by the bar on which the pare runs. These mishaps, however, were due to faulty machinery, and, with a skilled electrical engineer in the cont rol tower regulating the hare's pace, are not likely to occur again. Except for quite unforeseen accidents, the only other way in which a race may be ruined is in the event of the dogs ceasing to take an interest in their quarry for some reason and—for, muzzled though they are, even so their teeth are not entirely useless—starting to savage each other instead ; but since the temper of a dog, if it is a well-bred dog, depends very largely on its trainer, savaging should not be much seen on efficiently run tracks. And, anyhow—unless they enjoy the racing for its own sake, in which case an express tramcar should do just as well as a stuffed hare-skin— greyhounds are surely proven idiots. For three years in America the best Irish-bred dogs have been chasing round five hundred yards of turf after a complete illusion, and there seems no reason to suppose that British dogs, whether in Edinburgh, Leeds, or London, will ever discover that they arc wasting their time.
The construction of it greyhound racing track is obviously a long and complicated business, but probably only a small minority of the thousands who Nvatched London's first races at the beginning of this week realized how much time and patience had been spent beforehand in grading the dogs-----that is, grouping them according to speed, so that the race would be a race. It is plainly futile to match a clog which takes 32 sees. to do the 500 yards with another whose average time is 29 sees., but you cannot tell simply by looking at a dog whether it is going to be a champion or not, and even if you pay .t150 for it, you cannot be sure that it will complete the course in less time than the :C10, 33-second dogs take ; the animal may develop a cold at the last moment and thus become worse than useless as a starter.
The electric hare (which, it should perhaps be explained, is simply an object moving along an electric rail, and is in no way animated itself) has set up a new standard of speed—of sheer speed, untrammelled, without considera- tion of nimbleness or quick-turning abilities in grey- hounds, so that a champion coursing dog would in all probability be a failure on the race-track ; but the Odd points for breeding are still, I believe, very much as they always were. I shall not attempt to catalogue the points of a well-bred greyhound because I have never bred the beasts, and make my selections, when I go to the dogs, according to names, colours, and general appearance of slinkiness ; but I notice that even the experts on form are not always entirely agreed on all issues. There was, for instance, the recent discussion about feet, which was opened by a writer who stated, innocently enough, that a greyhound's feet should he like a cat's. Immediately this was challenged by another writer, who preferred, he said, that all the best greyhounds should have feet like terriers', and it was not until a third writer gently interpolated the news that since terriers' feet should be like cats' feet it all came to much the same thing that the second over-scrupulous expert was silenced. However, nobody can be expected to know all about a sport which is as yet only in its infancy. Let me admit that on the Only .occasion so far on which I selected a dog because of its apparently intelligent eyes, rat-like tail, snake-like neck, straight forelegs, and deep chest (all good racing points) the animal had not even the ordinary wit to keep on the inside of the track, and finished a good second behind its fellows. On the other hand, when I chose a dog for its slinky look and rose-coloured coat, it finished with the best time of the evening.
It is not possible to say whether London will take to this new sport with the wholeheartedness that the bookmakers would like to see, or even with the enthusiasm accorded to it by the jugged hare enthusiasts of the Midlands. The sport was first tried out in Manchester because, as one of the promoters of the Greyhound Racing Association somewhat inadequately put it, "Manchester was fond of dogs." I think it would be quite logical to say that it has succeeded in Manchester because Manchester is inordinately fond of gambling. London is more amused than anything else so far—has it not already nicknamed the queer, impossible creature, with its cocked-up legs and humorous face, the " jugged hare " ?—and if any of the two hundred odd bookmakers who were present at the White City on Monday night took more than £20 he was certainly lucky. Again, who on earth but the dogged people of the Midlands would sit out on a streaming wet night, with none of the rose and gold glimmer of a fine summer twilight to make a fantastic picture of the track, simply to watch an electrical absurdity making fools of a bedraggled pack of hounds ? I suppose that, as a matter of fact, the racing will be abandoned on wet nights, but it is as well to visualize the worst as well as the best.. One can only reiterate, finally, that it is a clean sport, a great gamble, and a cheap and entirely fascinating entertainment under ideal weather conditions.
HA:WISH MACLAREN.
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