Had this great idea at the weekend.
How about setting up a Scalextric track in your attic, and using tiny kittens-have them chase after the wee cars round the circuit with tiny numbers on them, you could take bets and have a day at the track in your own home!
You could reward the kitties with treats.
one of the horse racing tracks here has “weiner dog races” every year - a bunch (herd? gaggle?) of dachshund running down the track. (if you’ve ever owned a weiner dog, you’ll know they can’t run a quarter mile!).
PETA protests it every year. Ah - it’s ok for horses but not weiner dogs??
A friend of mine once got up a rigged rat race. The rats were trained in runways which were painted to be distinguishably different. (White, black, stripes and so on.) Then the rats were trained to run at different speeds in different runways. Rat A might be trained to run fast in white and slowly in black. When people saw rat A win in white they would bet on him. He would be switched to the black runway, though, so some other rat would win the next race. I doubt that the payoff was enough to offset the tedium of training the rats.
heh
just found this.
Racing sucks for horses too. Here in upstate NY, everyone goes totally nutso during the Saratoga racing season, but I’m not at all interested. From what I’ve heard, the horses are really too young to be raced this hard-- think Boston Marathon, for 5 year old children. Their bones are not fully mature yet. Horses that don’t make the grade are often put down and written off as a business loss rather than being sold which would count as a profit. Never did see the appeal of standing around for long periods of time in a line to place a bet for a race that will be over in a matter of seconds. Maybe it’s just me…
BTW-- don’t underestimate weiner dogs! I went hiking in the Adirondacks this past weekend and as I was going up a rather steep stretch of mountain, a woman came down with two of the short legged beasties on leashes. She said they LOVED hiking in the mountains-- the tougher the mountain the better!! They really did look like they were having a blast.
Given what an untrained, damaged, thoroughbred would sell for it is generally less expensive to put them down than sell them.
oh - I know about some of the problems in horse racing - I just thought it was kinda strange that PETA would protest daschund racing and not horse racing.
And I would NEVER underestimate a weiner dog. “I” had one (that’s in quotes because even though my name was on the AKC registration, she was really my dad’s dog) that lived for 18 years. Opinionated, obstinent little thing - and she would NEVER walk on a leash. She would turn on her back and let you drag her (but she would stay right with you off a leash, so it was no big deal). She knew exactly where the boundries of the yard were, and would run other dogs and bunnies right to the edge and stop.
That’s our miniture greyhound. Name’s Slim. My wife, Peggy, is a fast runner.
Tony
They generally do, actually. The particular branch in your area may not picket the track, but horse racing is definitely on PETA’s no-no list.
Redwolf
Everything is on PETA’s no-no list. I’m surprised they haven’t tried to get the Wombat or evil cat thread closed.