Nothing funny about coursing film
It is supposed to be a comedy, but it didn’t amuse me in the slightest. As a person concerned with animal welfare, I didn’t get any laughs from the cruelty depicted - a guy heading into the bushes with a shovel to kill a lurcher, a dog being shot at a farmer’s request, a bird of prey shot at a game fair, a crow shot on the coursing field, a terrified cat used to lure greyhounds off the track to fix a race, a dog killed by a car and various greyhounds being administered drugs to make them run faster.
There was nothing remotely funny or entertaining in this film for me. In my view, it portrayed the greyhound industry as a low-life world of callous cruelty and corruption - many who know the inside track on certain aspects of greyhound racing might well agree with that portrayal.
I found the scenes of coursing at Clonmel very interesting, especially when the narrator launched into a familiar explanation of how coursing works, ie, it’s not about killing, but turning, the hare, and it gets into the escape “safe and sound”.
Well, I have news for Sean McGinley and the producers of Man About Dog - that’s not what it’s “really” like all the time because hares don’t always get into the escape area unscathed, and we have video footage to prove it - hares being hit by muzzled greyhounds, tossed into the air, pinned down, mauled and battered, resulting in injuries that lead to death in most cases.
And if Mr McGinley won’t accept our film evidence, maybe he would accept official Department of Environment reports, obtained by us under the Freedom of Information Act, which clearly show that not a coursing season goes by without hares being injured and killed by greyhounds.
And not only that, many hares die of stress-related illnesses. For example, out of a total of 80 hares captured from the wild for a coursing meeting in Wexford last December, 40 died in the compound. The vet, in his report, stated: “Hares, being normally solitary animals, are significantly stressed when corralled and coursed, and this combination of circumstances has resulted in the deaths in this case.”
Finally, it was also stated in the film that hare coursing was a major ‘sport’ in Ireland with a minority opposed to it. Wrong way around - coursing is a minority activity, with the vast majority opposed, according to independent surveys carried out since the late ’70s.
The most recent poll, taken in 1998, showed a whopping 80%, across town and country, opposed to coursing.
Aideen Yourell
Irish Council Against Bloodsports
PO Box 88
Mullingar
Co Westmeath
