Going to the dogs for money

PAUL GALLICO

AT AGUA CALIENTE.—In one corner of the big gambling plant, where you drink suissesses for breakfast to help you forget the night before, where the movie stars hide in haciendas all hut covered by scarlet blossoms, where the bartenders work in four shifts and the dealers hide their eyes behind green eyeshades, there is a smaller track, a quarter-mile oval. Naked incandescents are strung from poles around the inside. Beneath the grandstand are bars, gaming tables, and mutuel windows.

There was a bugle call announcing the third race. The white lights turned night not into day but into a curious half world like a photographic negative. Down the track toward the grandstand paraded a gaily dressed Mexican. Behind him, clad in red, followed eight grooms with long-nosed, doe-eyed, spidery-legged greyhounds.

The dogs walked along on leash, lifting and setting down their delicate feet. A mechanical phonograph played a march. They disappeared' down the track and into the starting boxes. Then, with a rush and a roar, the mechanical rabbit swung around the track on its mono-rail, like the steeplechase horses in Coney Island. An instant later the pack of greyhounds was streaming out behind.

After that it was impossible to take one's eyes away from them. The dogs ran with their bodies held practically still, hut their heads bobbed up and down in fascinating anti-rhythm and counterpoint. The whole thing was fluid, fast, and furious, with the dipping heads changing positions, moving up, sliding back. Shoulder to shoulder, the pups streamed around the track, eight yards behind the silly looking rabbit. Finally the dogs stuck their heads across the finish line, one, two, three; the shouts of the spectators were clipped off; and the hounds scampered into the arms of their trainers at the end of the track, barking and yipping with excitement.

That is dog racing, and so you will find it conducted on the southern circuit, Miami, St. Petersburg, Coral Gables, Jacksonville, and, up North, at Mineola, Long Island, and Linden, New Jersey, on Staten Island, and around Chicago, too, except for long glittering bars, roulette tables, "21 " games, and betting windows. Only the spindle-shanked greyhounds run in the North, wheeling around the quarter-mile tracks. Down South the smaller whippets run their sprint races down the hundred-yard straightaways, white-taped lanes, with their owners and handlers standing at the finish line waving white flags like anxious matadors. But whippet racing is more of an amateur sport, comparable to the gentleman riders of the turf. The favorite professional bow-wows are the greyhounds. The action for a two-dollar note is fast, and, strangely, there is not so much tampering and monkey business as is popularly supposed.

Naturally, any sport in which there are sums of money bandied about is an invitation to skullduggery. Villainies similar to those practiced at the pony tracks have been rife at the pooch emporiums—-so much so that in an effort to protect the patrons and the breeders a Bertillon system for identification purposes to prevent ringers is used at every reputable track. The information thereon includes weight, age, color, sex, the length of the tail, or Schwanz as it is known in Germany (brush in England), color of toe-nails, kennel name, and all scars or identifying marks.

Chewing gum has been found wedged between the toe-nails of animals due to race, much as horses are sponged; and skeptical patrons have maintained that certain minor miracles can be worked by the gentleman at the throttle of the gadget that controls the speed of the rabbit. This deus-ex-rabbit-chase sits in a tower of the grandstand and keeps the phony bunny about eight yards ahead of the dog leading the pack. By dropping it back a mite, or pulling it out ahead, he is said to be able to influence the performance of certain dogs, but then I would not know about this. I am always slow to suspicion.

The greyhounds race at three distances— the quarter mile, the Futurity (which is fifty-six yards farther) and the five-sixteenths of a mile. Good time for the quarter mile is twenty-six seconds, and the dogs will run the last sixteenth in six seconds more. Eight dogs start in a race, and there are eight to ten races on an evening's program, with betting conducted in the mutuel manner only—to save the face of the local constabulary—by means of options sold on the dog and later redeemed at the prevailing odds. The approximate odds are posted before the start of the race.

The greyhounds chase the mechanical rabbit. They chase him because they are good and damn hungry. The dogs are fed but once in twenty-four hours, at twelve o'clock at night, on hamburger, bran and spinach l the spinach makes them furious). They chase by sight, not scent. When the starting-boxes are sprung, the pups are off to get dinner. What makes a whippet run is a little more complicated. A kind friend holds the pooch in his arms at the start. The owner then backs down the hundred-yard stretch waving a white flag, handkerchief, or a wiener schnitzel. When they reach the finish line the owners stand there waving frantically, and the kind friends release the whippets at the word "Go." The whippets run like hell to their owners.

The whippet is a small dog. The greyhound weighs from fifty-five to 70 pounds. Greyhounds begin to race when they are two years old and are good for five years. The greatest greyhound of all time was named Mike the Miller. He was bred in Ireland and sold to Arthur Kempton of London for $4,000. Between 1929 and 1931 he won more than $50,000 for his owner on English tracks. His record of 34 seconds for six hundred yards still stands. Names that are familiar to dog followers around the local tracks are Hipsing, probably the best greyhound ever run in this country, Irish Alden, a great finisher, John J., My Jammie, Narcissus and Dry Dock Burke.

There is a legend current that the greyhound, while he is the fastest canine afoot, has a soft and pettable skin, and big appealing eyes, is not very bright. I would say that the fact that he can be coaxed to chase a fake rabbit, made out of fur drawn over a chunk of wood and mounted on a monorail, and run himself ragged so that the boys can get a little bet down, does nothing to throw7 doubt upon the truth of the legend. You would hardly call him smart.