At Sharon Dippel’s
Florida home, a
retired racing grey-
hound named Fly to
Barcelona—now called
Roxanne—climbs out
of the swimming pool.
Dippel runs a grey-
hound adoption
agency, and she and
her husband also have
eight adopted dogs.
Greyhounds are gen-
tle and affectionate,
she says, and when not
running outside, they
“sleep 80 percent of
the day.”Besides the track employees losing jobs, the
shutdown affected trainers and kennel owners.
Farmer, for example, said he would relocate to
West Virginia, one of the three remaining states
(along with Iowa and Arkansas) that still have
consistent racing seasons.
Grey2K USA is working to have racing banned
in those states and in Australia, Ireland,
Mexico, New Zealand, the United Kingdom,
and Vietnam.
Greyhound adoption agencies set about
finding homes for the Florida dogs that were
still racing as of December 2020. One of those
organizations was GST’s Sun State Grey-
hound Adoption, run by Sharon Dippel. She
and her husband, Brian, have eight adopted
dogs themselves. They go through a couple of
44-pound bags of dog food every 10 days or so.
Dippel said plenty of people lined up to adopt
dogs. It helped that Florida’s tracks didn’t shut
down simultaneously. Some closed shortly
after the 2018 vote, others in early 2020 because
of COVID-19.
As pets, greyhounds still like to run when
they get outdoors, even without a mechanical
device to chase, Dippel said. But when they get
back indoors?
“They’re a 45-mile-per-hour couch potato.” jCraig Pittman is the author of five books on Flor-
ida, his native state, and cohost of the “Welcome
to Florida” podcast. Erika Larsen documents cul-
tures that maintain close ties with nature.THEY’RE OFF AND GONE 135