Dog Racing
Dog racing uses a device similar in nature and concept to the horse racing starting gate. The machine is usually called a starting box, owing to its use of boxes to hold the greyhounds in place. Dogs are loaded from the rear, with a small window in the front door through which the dog can see the track and the mechanical lure.
Once the lure has come around to a point a few meters in front of the box, the dogs are released when the front doors are swung upward to open. Unlike horse racing, this action does not signal the totalizator system to end betting; that is done instead by a steward just before the lure is sent on its way.
Starting boxes normally hold eight dogs, with some holding nine.
Read more about this topic: Starting Gate
Famous quotes containing the words dog and/or racing:
“If you are a dog and your owner suggests that you wear a sweater ... suggest that he wear a tail.”
—Fran Lebowitz (b. 1951)
“Upscale people are fixated with food simply because they are now able to eat so much of it without getting fat, and the reason they don’t get fat is that they maintain a profligate level of calorie expenditure. The very same people whose evenings begin with melted goat’s cheese ... get up at dawn to run, break for a mid-morning aerobics class, and watch the evening news while racing on a stationary bicycle.”
—Barbara Ehrenreich (b. 1941)