It debuted during the Super Bowl, and though it was upsetting at the time, the commercial was so bad I just assumed it would go away. But it hasn’t. You can’t have ESPN on for 45 minutes without seeing it. I was hesitant to even mention the name of the company doing the advertising, but if you don’t know what I’m talking about, this is the commercial. There are many, many reasons to dislike this awful ad. Here are just a few.
First of all, before we even get the real issues, let’s deal with this: the commercial is extraordinarily stupid. I understand that nothing involving a dog wearing baby shoes and moonwalking should be taken seriously. But really, it’s not any kind of funny. It’s not cute. It’s certainly not informative–I’m sure there are some people who see that and wonder if the company is actually selling shoes for dogs. It’s just…nothing. (For what it’s worth, Mark Cuban’s cameo at the end is the least absurd part of the commercial, but he hardly saves it.)
More to the point though: when I first saw the commercial during the Super Bowl, I got sort of angry. It probably has to do with the fact that I have a retired racing greyhound. Her name is Jailamony, and she’s awesome. But as much joy as she brings, she also bears lots of harsh reminders of her racing past. She has tattoos in both ears and a chipped tooth from the crate she was kept in for at least 20 hours a day. She also has a permanently broken leg–from her last race in Miami. Because paying for medical care for a dog that will never race again (and has no chance of making money) doesn’t make much financial sense for trainers and owners, the leg was never treated, never set.
After adopting her a few years ago, I started researching greyhound racing. (I was living in Florida at the time, the “mecca” of dog racing in this country.) I wrote about it here. Turns out, the moribund dog racing industry (note that I do not call it a “sport”) has been on its way out for years and sustains itself largely by relying on the ignorance of the tax-paying public. Yes, in most places where it still exists, dog racing is subsidized. And the more the public learns just how many of these wonderful dogs are killed or severely injured on the track (on some tracks, it’s more than one serious injury per week), or what happens to some of the dogs when their racing careers are over, the nearer to the last race we get. In Florida, even the track owners are trying to stop racing — it hasn’t been profitable in more than a decade — but they are required by law to run dogs several days a week in order to legally operate the adjacent casinos.
A few anti-dog racing groups have complained about the commercial, and more than 120,000 people signed a petition to kill it before it even aired. But most people either don’t know enough or care enough to be bothered by it — the same reason the industry persists. If this shoe commercial, shot at a troubled track in Arizona, were trying to depict racing accurately, it might look like this:
Instead of being filled with wealthy-looking fans, engaged and cheering, the grandstands would be mostly empty, dotted with a few longtime “dogmen” clutching tickets and screaming obscenities at the television monitors. Instead of well-groomed, clean-teethed racing greyhounds, the runners would likely be skinnier (trainers don’t often feed the dogs on the day before a race). They would almost certainly have patches of missing fur (“kennel butt,” caused by the long hours in small crates). Some might have some broken toes or tails from recent races. They probably wouldn’t run with so much space between them either, and when they come around the first turn, at least one might take a rough tumble. It would not be pretty, and it would not sell shoes.
So yeah, just about every aspect of that commercial bothers me. That’s all. Now consider adopting a greyhound.
