STEWARDS REPORT – RACE 8
8 There’s A Shadow – Shortened stride and appeared injured in the back straight. and lost ground around the second turn. A post-race veterinary examination revealed a nearside front stopper bone injury and stood down from racing for 42 days and will need to perform a veterinary clearance trial. This will be referred to the racing injury review panel.
A fractured stopper bone is an extremely severe injury, and the ability for the dog to recover fully and get back to racing again depends entirely on the severity of the fracture, and other associated damage.
In many instances the fracture also involves damage to the ligaments of the wrist and to the flexor tendons, and/or a bone chip breaking away.
If X-rays have shown that it is a simple fracture with no bone displacement, magnetic field treatment daily for 4 weeks and a further 4 weeks rest may see the dog back able to gallop again.
On the other hand if there is any bone displacement or bone chips it will require an operation to remove any small chips of bone, and to stabilise the fracture. In this situation the chances of having the dog return to racing without any loss of speed are only 50%.
Is this for real?
A greyhound breaks down in race 8, and the Stewards declare that it has suffered a front stopper bone injury.
They are only confirming what anyone with any knowledge of dogs who watched the race live or the replay can see.
This dog – name There’s Is Shadow – is lamer than a one legged duck hit with buckshot during hunting season.
Have a look for yourself.
You are looking at the pink, drawn the outside.
It’s obvious.
A stopper bone injury is one of the most painful that a greyhound can suffer, and requires immediate veterinary attention so that the appropriate tests, including z-rays and scans, can be conducted to determine whether it is a tendon tear, a fracture, a broken bone or a combination of any of the three. A clinical diagnosis of such is absolutely essential to working out a treatment plan to heal the injury, and prompt vet attention is required so that appropriate medical relief can be administered to the dog to relieve it’s pain.
If a greyhound trainer fails to seek such attention in a timely manner they can and will be disqualified from holding a license for a long period on animal welfare breach grounds.
But what if it is the QRIC that deny the greyhound the attention it requires, and leaves it without vet care writhing in pain in the heat of the summer sun?
We are told by people who were at the track at Bundy that There’s A Shadow’s trainer Matthew Evans approached the Stewards immediately after the on-course vet had attended to his dog and ascertained that it had suffered the stopper bone injury, and requested that permission be given to late scratch his runner in the tenth and last race so that he could immediately transport the greyhound to a veterinary clinic for urgent attention that the on-course vet was unable to provide.
What we are told is that the Stewards refused such permission, and told the trainer that it was only 20 or 30 minutes until the final race, and that the dog with the broken or torn stopper bone or ligament would be okay until then.
How do you reckon you would you be waiting half an hour for readily available medical treatment for a suspected broken leg?
Do you think you might be criminally charged if you left your kid unattended for more than an hour with such a painful injury?
Of course you would.
So why did the Stewards who are employed with a principal objective of protecting the welfare of racing animals do it?
It is a question that I cannot answer, which doesn’t make me a mental cripple for there is no real good answer.
You might have noticed that our mail was that the Stipes said the dog would be right for half an hour, and that then I said that the dog was left in pain as a result of their actions for an hour and a half.
It was no mistake, for that is what really happened, or at least that’s what we are told by those who witnessed the incident and the aftermath.
They say that in order to get off and away to the vets asap, after his dog raced in the last Matthew Evans jumped the queue to get cleared by the stipes, and another trainer – one who was totally unaware of the reasons for his seeming rudeness, because the Stewards hadn’t told her of the issue – barked up, and that a minor verbal dispute ensued.
The same folk say that instead of standing an inquiry into the matter down, the QRIC stipes insisted on dealing with it there and then, which meant that the poor dog from the 8th race that they knew was laying down in agony had to do so for another hour while they interrogated Matthew Evans and the unsuspecting trainer about the words that were exchanged, and then deliberated upon the matter prior to issuing Evans with the fine described in the excerpt at the top of this story.
Are these Stewards for real?
Is the QRIC?
Animal welfare my arse.
This is animal cruelty.
And it was all performed by the Stewards.
God help the greyhounds.
In Queensland he and the trainers who care about them seem to be the only ones who can.