Death In The Fast Lane: Why Dog Racing Should Be Virtual

Astro Hounds
3 min readJan 11, 2022

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Astro Hounds is on a mission to replace the real life greyhound racing industry with a virtual one 🏁

Why?

Here is the dark reality of life in the fast lane:

1. Cruel living conditions

Unfortunately, greyhounds live permanently at the stadium in confinement. It is widely reported that greyhound pens are barely large enough for the greyhound to stand. They may also confined for up to 23 hours a day, in a bid to conserve greyhound energy for racing. Often, the pens are concrete and bare, offering little warmth or comfort for the hounds, making life uncomfortable and distressing. According to GREY2K USA Worldwide, an average of between 500 and 1,000 dogs are required in order to operate a racetrack. That means there could be up to 1000 greyhounds living in these conditions per stadium.

2. High death toll

Greyhounds are bred for racing. This sadly means they have little value once they reach a certain age. At this point, it is not uncommon for them to be killed. In Australia, 4–5 dogs are killed every week on the track — this is on top of the 10,000 killed every year after retiring. These figures are also seen in the UK, where 10,000 greyhounds are killed annually. In Florida, more than 1,000 hounds have died on the tracks since 2008, and in Ireland, 6,000 are killed each year.

3. Fixing and drugging

The cruel treatment of the animals is not the only dark secret of the industry. Greyhounds are known to be the subject of doping in underground fixing and rigging. BBC panorama documentary ‘Drugs and Money: Dog Racing Undercover’ exposed British greyhound trainers drugging their dogs with steroids and other adrenaline boosters such as cocaine to increase their speed. Undercover investigations have also shown that trainers may use Valoids which slow the speed of the dog, which lengthens the odds for it. Once it is categorised as a long shot, the dog is taken off the drug and can race at full speed.

Fortunately, Astro Hounds is building a virtual racing ecosystem which replaces and removes the need to utilise greyhounds in real life entertainment, forever 🐕

This means no more greyhound cruelty — a huge win 🎉

Secondly, by infusing our hounds with genetic algorithms, which interact with our algorithm controlled races in determining the winner, we totally remove the chance for fixing or rigging. We also offer 100% individualised hounds, that are totally unique in every way, like real biology 🧬

Finally, by building Astro Hounds on the blockchain, we open up the transparency of our game, offering our players full trust in fair play.

Join our revolution.

Any by the way, if like us you are interested in finding out more, check out some resources on greyhound racing here:

https://www.peta.org/issues/animals-in-entertainment/cruel-sports/greyhound-racing/

https://news.sky.com/story/greyhound-deaths-reveal-dark-side-to-dog-racing-11362388

http://www.unleashed.org.au/blog/2015-02/7-horrifying-truths-about-greyhound-racing

https://houndsfirst.co.uk/greyhound-racing-the-facts/

https://www.sundaypost.com/fp/dark-secrets-of-dog-racing/

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b04q0l0p

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