"By giving a dog a mild shock of a battery... the dog will then runs faster". From the spokesperson of the Greyhound Breeders, Owners, and Trainers Association (NSW) state.

Dog racing is a big business. In the UK alone is staggering 2 billion pound worth of bets. In North America, it is the 6th most popular "sport". An estimated $3b is bet annually on 45,000 dogs running on 59 tracks, raising $200 million in taxes.

More than 100,000 greyhounds are bred every year, 40,000 only in Great Britain and Ireland, which is the biggest dog race industry in the world Greyhounds are naturally docile and gentle creatures. There is a series of tricks used by their trainers to make them aggressive at the track. The dogs, who do not serve human interests by winning, quickly become expendable commodities. One greyhound that has reached racing entry level represents seven others that have so far been "culled" – shooting their dogs in the head – killed because they were milliseconds slower, or didn't learn fast enough, or were a wee bit too stubborn. "Killing unwanted sled-dog puppies is part of doing business".

Greyhound racers live in small cages, usually no greater than three feet in diameter. Handlers remove them from their cages only rarely, to go to urinate, and for infrequent races during the course of a week.

Greyhounds running on British tracks sustain more than 12,000 injuries every year and that 10% of dogs that race are already suffering from range of injuries, from footpad abrasions, ligament strains, and leg fractures, to broken bones and broken toes. Their muzzles further prevent them from nibbling at insects that land on them and from licking their own sores.
Many ex-racing greyhounds are simply abandoned and a large number are killed, sometimes by extremely cruel methods such as drowning or poisoning. A large number of trainers are shooting dogs in the head or the heart when their racing days are over, because some owners and trainers are not prepared to pay the cost of having them put to sleep by a vet.

Every year many hundreds of "unwanted" greyhounds are shipped to Spain to be kept for racing in appalling conditions or used for hunting and coursing. Dogs, which turn out to be no good for hunting, are often brutally disposed of, by hanging.

The WGRF (World Greyhound Racing Federation) racing's governing body has begun to expand greyhound racing to Asia, countries such as Vietnam, Korea, Indo China, Cambodia, and the Philippines. These countries are notorious for killing dogs for human consumption using cruel methods such as hanging the dogs by the throat and skinning them then using a blowtorch, they roast them. The same fate is facing the greyhounds.

Some injuries and disorders that occur during the race include spinal injuries, bone fractures, sore and cut paws, ruptured tendon sheaths, torn muscles, sore joints, dehydration, stress and diarrhea. Intestinal infections occur when mushers feed their dogs food contaminated with Salmonella bacteria. When temperatures rise, dog food dropped off and left outside during the race often spoils.

In almost all of the Iditarod races, at least one dog death has occurred.
Causes of death during the last ten years have included strangulation in towlines, internal hemorrhaging after being gouged by a sled, liver injury, heart failure, and pneumonia. Cause of extreme and prolonged exercise, "sudden death" and "external Myopathy", a condition, in which a dog's muscles and organs deteriorate.

Some mushers live in towns that have no veterinarians, so that dogs must be transported great distances to receive veterinary care. Mushers who live in small towns where there are no roads and no veterinarians have to fly their dogs in small airplanes hundreds of miles to obtain treatment.

These dogs are never given the opportunity to run free even in a fenced area. They drink water from hard to reach rusty cans that are bolted to their doghouses and are rarely cleaned or disinfected.

All of the dogs, even those who are injured, old, or arthritics are kept outside in the winter when the average daily minimum temperatures range from -24 to 15 degrees Fahrenheit. It is painful for these dogs to be in such intense cold.
In the summer, the only shade they get is inside their dirty doghouse or under their doghouse if they are lucky enough to have one that is raised off the ground. Some dogs are never bathed, and nothing is done to help them cool off no matter how hot it gets. These dogs are depressed prisoners with no chance of parole.

Some dogs are tethered to exercise wheels, in groups, as part of their pre-race training. Because the dogs run at varying speeds, the slower runners are pulled along by the neck, which causes injuries. Dogs who are tired or ill are forced to run too. The number of injuries from the exercise wheel is extremely high.

Hundreds of thousand of small animals – most of them rabbits, die yearly during the training of greyhounds. Trainers use those animals as live bait, exhorting greyhounds to chase the animals around a track in order to simulate race conditions. Trainers allow dogs to catch and destroy those innocent animals that are no longer able to run “effectively”.

Dogs that have no propensity to kill are placed in cages at close quarters with rabbits. The trainers then deny the dogs’ food, starving them until hunger drives them to kill their caged companions. In this way, trainers awaken bloodlust in dogs that are non-violent by character.

Money, as always, is the name of the game. As a result, greyhound racers hardly ever reach over the age of five years old. How many dogs actually race? The figure is extremely variable. There are a significant number of dogs that will never race at all. If they remain injury-free, some may have 60-80 starts in their career.

The few dogs that do generate earnings will enjoy shorter-lives, until they are disposed. The others that don't earn their keep by winning, are murdered, sold to research facilities, exported overseas, or could face abandonment. Many have been clubbed to death, or deliberately drowned. In other cases, dogs have been wrapped in barbed wire, or had their legs set in concrete, injected with household cleaners resulting in excruciating death, starved to death, or beaten to death. Some are just dumped in the road, where they are impounded and destroyed.

Pain and eventual death – this is they grand finale of a racing greyhound's life. Retired greyhounds, or those that don't perform at the track, are routinely shipped off to laboratories. Because of their genetic purity, they are the research models of choice for heart and lung experiments. Thus, greyhound racing functions not only as a "sport" and gambling enterprise, but as a breeding facility for cruel vivisection practices.