(IN): Punjab Dog Racing

[Guest guest]

*Kind attention: Secretary & Chairperson, Animal Welfare Board of India

(AWBI)*

*

*

 

Respected all,

 

Please allow me to bring to your knowledge the following news report which

has been published in one of the India's most esteemed news magazine-

OUTLOOK.

 

The news report is self explanatory.

 

It is unbelievable that at a time when the whole nation is standing up

against animal, environment and wildlife crimes, a section of people from

India's most developed state- Punjab that includes filthy rich NRI's (Non

Resident Indians) is abusing animals and celebrating the violations.

 

Each one of the so called shikaris (one time hunters) involved in this act

can be booked for gross violations as per Sec 11 of the PCA act.

 

Citing the HUNTING BAN as an excuse for their 'Passion' which certainly was

not their 'Livelihood', these anti-socials are engaging and promoting a

crime which I am afraid if not restricted right now would snowball into a

tradition soon all over the country.

 

For a board which is already under severe stress and trauma from controlling

the population of homeless Indian Dogs, could the possibility of stray

Greyhound overpopulation in near future a matter of concern?

 

 

warm regards,

 

 

Azam Siddiqui

 

Master Trainer in Animal Welfare (2001)

AWBI

 

 

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http://www.outlookindia.com/article.aspx?264253

 

<http://www.outlookindia.com/article.aspx?264253>

PUNJAB: DOG RACING

Dogspeed By The Beas

Amidst the wheat fields, the bound and pace and stride of greyhounds feeds a

racing craze

CHANDERSUTA

DOGRA<http://www.outlookindia.com/peoplefnl.aspx?pid=11760 & author=Chandersuta+Do\

gra>

 

The winter wheat across rural Punjab is a blur of green, the tender shoots

rising fast to meet the mild sunshine. Not high enough yet to hide a dog, or

even a hare. A fine time, many would say, for racing dogs. And an even

better time to hunt with them. What about the ban? Well, for the avid

shikari, the ban on hunting has only inspired ways to get around it. Enter

the dogs—greyhounds, if you please.

 

But racing first, because, after all, it is legal. This winter, Punjab’s

rural calendar is chock-a-block with greyhound racing events, a race taking

place every few days in one village or the other. It’s a sport that has

gained currency over the last 15 years or so. After all, with the rifles of

the shikaris silenced by the ban, their retrieving dogs, reared with so much

passion, had to be kept busy. About 500 greyhound races take place in Punjab

every winter, and the craze is growing with every season. So is the prize

money for the winner, which ranges from Rs 11,000 to Rs 1 lakh. Each race is

like a carnival, with the villagers chipping in not just for the prize

money, but also for pakodas, chai and hearty Punjabi meals. But for some of

the female contestants on the track, it would be an all-male carnival.

 

Paramjit Singh Hundal is the quintessential Punjabi nri. Nothing can keep

this owner of a flourishing textile business in Germany away from his native

village, Kotli Raiyyan in Hoshiarpur district, during the winter months.

Apart from good food and convivial company, the big draw for Hundal is the

annual greyhound race he organises here in memory of his father. “In 1947,

when we fled Pakistan and came to India, we left behind all possessions

except our dogs. My father was so attached to them that he couldn’t bear to

part with them. So when he died, I decided to organise this competition as a

tribute to his passion,” he says, in between a couple of races at Kotli. As

the event ends, he goes into celebration mode—his prize greyhound, Atom, a

powerful creature with rippling muscles, imported from Germany for 2,000

euros, is the winner!

 

For other punters, it’s hard business rather than sentiment that is the

pulling force. Deepinder Singh Rikhi, originally from Jalandhar, is a truck

driver in the US. “Each year, I bring four or five prize greyhounds from the

US and sell them here,” he says. A greyhound with a good bloodline sells for

Rs 3 lakh to 4 lakh, and once a dog has won a race, its pups are in great

demand. For Deepinder and many nris like him, importing hounds helps pay for

the winter holiday in Punjab. Since these ‘businessmen’ are also keen

participants in the races, there is invariably a big nri presence at these

affairs. Sukhbir Singh, an avid dog racer, says, “Each year, some 50 dogs

are imported to Punjab from countries like the UK, US, Canada and Germany.”

Their owners pamper them like children, feeding them a high-protein diet

that typically consists of half a kilo of meat, 200 gms of high quality

animal feed, half a kilo of curds and four eggs daily.

 

But what do the dogs do the rest of the year, once the racing season is

over? Simple, they train to run faster and faster. And here lies the story

that dog racers don’t like to talk about.

 

“The dogs are almost always trained on live hare in the countryside,” says

Sukhdeep Singh Bajwa, a farmer who formerly served as a honorary wildlife

warden in Gurdaspur. “Each training session usually ends with the

unfortunate hare being divided up between the dogs and the trainers.”

 

At the races, a decoy hare attached to the end of a wire is used to get the

dogs running on the 100-metre track. The decoy gets the hounds gnashing

their teeth and straining at their leashes. As the hounds chase it, a winch

winds up the wire, drawing the decoy swiftly to the finishing line, and with

it, the contestants. Often there is high drama, with the pair on the track

(only two dogs run at a time) getting at each other’s throats—so frustrated

are they at not having caught the ‘hare’. Last year, one of Hundal’s dogs

died during training when it over-exerted itself while chasing a

particularly swift hare.

 

Killing wild hare, as indeed almost every wild animal, is illegal. But it’s

rampant across Punjab, says Bajwa. “It is very common to see groups of

village boys and their dogs chasing hare in the countryside in the

afternoon,” he says. The training is usually done after the kharif harvest

of paddy, when the fields are fallow, or in open scrub country.

 

It’s not just well-off farmers who rear greyhounds. Even middling farmers

with 15 to 20 acres like the cachet that having a greyhound or two tied in

their courtyards brings. These are often not the expensive imported variety

but humbler strains, which the farmers like to use for both racing and

hunting.

 

“Gunshots attract attention, so people are increasingly using dogs to hunt

for them,” says Bajwa. The dogs chase, attack and kill the animal quietly

and unobtrusively in the forest. From retriever to hunter, the shikari’s

best friend has taken on the role his master has defined. And every winter

he—or she—runs as well, to the sound of cheers, claps and shouts of

encouragement.

 

 

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