CAPITALISTS AND THEIR RUNNING DOGS

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, September 2000:

Harry Lee Coe, 68, state attorney
for Hillsborough County, Florida, since 1993,
apparently shot himself to death on July 12
after reportedly running up debts of $157,000
by betting on greyhound races.
The Birmingham Race Course i n
Birmingham, Alabama, is reportedly changing
procedures for unjamming a stuck lure to
avoid repetition of a June 21 incident in which
spectators saw a shrieking dog named Randad
suffer electrocution after jumping onto the
electric rail that propels the lure.
Three months after the allegations
came to light, the USDA and Wisconsin
Attorney General’s Office are reportedly still
investigating charges against Philadelphia
Eagles football team scout and Class B animal
dealer Daniel Shonka, of Cedar Rapids,
Wisconsin, who over three years is believed to
have taken more than 850 retired racing greyhounds
on the pretext of running a greyhound
adoption agency, and instead sold them for
$400 each to Guidant Corp., a Minnesota lab
that tests heart pacemakers.

The Camptown Greyhound Park
near Topeka, Kansas, was to resume live
races on August 4. Licensed in 1988, it didn’t
actually open until May 1995, and closed in
November 1995. The original owners filed for
bankruptcy in 1996. Wichita Greyhound
P a r k owner Phil Ruffin bought the track in
October 1999, intending to run them both
under the same administration.
The New South Wales Greyhound
Racing Authority in June banned trainer Ron
Gill and owner Andy Sarcasmo for life, and
suspended trainer Rodney Bragg for 10 years
for their roles in alleged race-fixing. They are
among six people now facing 25 criminal
charges in perhaps the biggest scandal ever to
hit greyhound racing in Australia. Gill in April
told the Independent Commission Against
C o r r u p t i o n he had paid Greyhound Racing
Authority chief steward Rodney Potter
“thousands of dollars” to get clean drug tests.
Gill denied giving amphetamines and caffeine
to dogs before actual races, but admitted drugging
pups while training them to race.