This page provides a serious of resources to support you in understanding greyhound behaviour. You can also access additional resources to support you in managing greyhound behaviour.
On this page you will find:
Behaviour and racing success
The behaviour of the adult greyhound is affected by its early experiences with people, other dogs and animals, and a range of different environments. A greyhound’s ability to confidently cope and adapt to different situations as it prepares for, and undertakes, a racing career is key to racing success.
A well socialised greyhound:
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- will recognise other breeds of dogs, particularly small dogs, as a dog and not as prey;
- is calm and relaxed in a learning (rearing, education and training) environment, as well as in the race setting;
- will interact in positive way with other greyhounds and humans; and
- copes well in a variety of environments and situations.
Socialising greyhounds for racing success provides valuable information on how to expose your greyhounds to positive experiences through socialisation and habituation. It talks about what socialisation means for racing success and what you can do to socialise greyhounds at any stage of their lifecycle.
Identifying and managing abnormal behaviours in greyhounds
Abnormal behaviours, often also called stereotypies are behaviours that are:
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- not normally seen in behaviourally healthy greyhounds; or
- normal behaviours repeated excessively; and/or
- normal behaviours that are being performed when they normally would not be.
Common examples include pacing, excessive barking, bopping, licking, panting or destructive chewing behaviour.
Some of the common reasons for the development of abnormal behaviours include boredom, prolonged anxiety or excitement, repeated or prolonged fear, a medical condition, an ongoing or repeated physical reasons such as heat, cold, hunger or thirst and frustration from a lack of opportunity to engage in normal behaviour.
Abnormal behaviours indicate that there is, or was, a problem with a greyhound’s environment at some time and is a coping mechanism. They allow the greyhound some relief from how it is feeling, and to adapt and cope with their environment. Yet, these behaviours use important energy and will impact on the greyhound’s ability to learn, race and enjoy life.
It is important not to suppress these coping behaviours as this will make the stress worse. The Abnormal behaviours in greyhounds FACT SHEET has some valuable information on identifying and managing abnormal behaviours. Once you understand why a greyhound has developed or is developing an abnormal behaviour, you can consider appropriate training, exercise and environmental enrichment strategies; as well as possible infrastructure or husbandry solutions.
Managing barking in the kennel environment
Excessive barking is one of the most common disruptions to a greyhound kennel. Often it is only one or two greyhounds who bark excessively, but their barking behaviour can influence and even teach younger dogs to bark.
They may be barking at other dogs, people walking past, seeking attention or alerting you to a threat. This is normal barking behaviour and is the way greyhounds communicate with each other and with people.
Abnormal barking behaviour is where a greyhound continues to bark long after they have made their communication. It may also be where they bark for extended periods of time for no apparent reason. It can be a sign that something is not quite right.
In a kennel where there are excessive barkers, the noise can be stressful and interfere with rest time for the whole kennel. This, in turn, can interfere with learning and race performance.
If you can get to the bottom of why your greyhounds are barking, you can put in place steps to reduce the barking triggers and address the barking response.
This booklet Barking in the racing greyhound kennel environment discusses excessive barking and presents different options for managing and retraining excessive barkers. With persistence and patience they should provide good results that are enduring through to retirement and re-homing.
Anti-barking electronic collars – Legal Requirements in Victoria
The use of electronic anti-barking collars is highly restricted in Victoria. There are very specific laws under the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals Act 1986 and Prevention of Cruelty to Animals Regulations which govern who can use electronic collars on dogs, when and for how long.
Participants must NOT use electronic anti-barking collars on any dog. If you wish to utilise this tool to manage barking behaviour, please carefully read the information on the Animal Welfare Victoria Website and the Code of Practice for Training Dogs and Cats to Wear Electronic Collars; and contact Animal Welfare Victoria on 136186 for more information.
Greyhounds, stress and boredom
We have probably all experienced at some time situations where our greyhounds, particularly those in a kennel environment, are behaving in a way that does not look normal. These behaviours are referred to as abnormal behaviours because they are often repetitive and/or are displayed in places or ways they would not normally be seen; for example, pacing, yawning repetitively, pawing, barking and chewing are just some examples of these behaviours. You may have seen a greyhound chewing on its bedding or the wire or wood in its kennel. It may have been pacing, bopping or barking excessively. In addition, a normally robust greyhound may be very withdrawn or submissive, they may become aggressive, they may have their tail tucked or ears flattened. Abnormal behaviours are often a sign that your greyhound is stressed. Stress can be both physical (your dog is injured or ill) or environmental (the environment is preventing your dog from displaying normal behaviours).
Abnormal behaviours can be both annoying and stressful; not just for us, but also for the greyhound and other dogs in the kennel and as a result, can lead to copycat behaviours in other greyhounds.
Often, boredom is the reason (the stressor) a greyhound displays behaviours such as chewing and excessive barking. Boredom is the result of a greyhound not having enough physical or mental stimulation. Greyhounds suffering from boredom-induced stress utilise valuable energy when they should be resting; they produce stress hormones that slow injuries from healing, muscles from repairing and adapting to training, and growth.
Chewing behaviours can have serious consequences for both the greyhound and you. Greyhounds can damage their teeth and mouth from biting on their metal cage, or be exposed to poisonous chemicals in treated timber, particularly arsenic, which can also cause a positive swab.
Boredom is relatively easy to resolve. The key to reducing boredom is to give the greyhound something quiet and stimulating to do – to enrich the kennel environment.
Enrichment is essential for the mental health of your greyhound, supporting their racing success. There are many cheap and simple ways that you can provide enrichment for the greyhounds in your kennels. In addition to providing plenty of daily exercise, grooming and positive handling, and regular opportunities for your greyhounds to play and socialise with other appropriate greyhounds, some enrichment examples are listed below:
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- Provide large raw bones weekly which are excellent for maintaining dental health and greyhounds will spend hours chewing them to reach the bone marrow in the middle which is also excellent nutrition. (Note: small and cooked bones present a risk for splintering and causing injury to your greyhound. Always provide large, whole, bones so your greyhound must work for the bone marrow)
- Hide food in different objects to keep your greyhound stimulated throughout the day between training and their night-time feed. The best way to do this is to replace a portion of their morning feed with a food puzzle or treat activity later in the morning. You could, for example, feed some premium kibble delivered in a treat ball or kong. Chew toys and food puzzles, if provided to all dogs at the same time, can result in a quieter kennel, as most greyhounds should settle down for a rest after completing it.
- Frozen food treats are also an option, and an excellent way to help greyhounds manage the heat in summer. To prepare these: place some premium kibble, meat or other food items in a 1 litre plastic container, cover with water or broth, then freeze. These frozen treats can be given to greyhounds on hot days or hot evenings in place of their normal meal to help keep them cool and occupied.
- Playing a radio or classical music has been found to reduce stress in greyhound kennels and support greyhounds in settling down for a rest after morning and evening activities.
As a rule of thumb, small and regular variations to routine and environment are more effective in reducing boredom than large or drastic changes in routine. Simple changes can include reversing feeding order once or twice a week, providing regular opportunities to leave the kennel and experience different environments (e.g. walks, trips to the track or trialling), meeting new people, and spending time with different compatible dogs.
More enrichment ideas can be found in these two documents:
While, enrichment should reduce the abnormal behaviours fairly quickly, you may not see them stop all together. This is because the behaviour, once it develops, becomes a coping mechanism for stress. This means that every time your greyhound feels stressed, despite the enrichment items you provide, they may resort to this learnt behaviour. However, if they do, it is a sign something is still not quite right for them and you many need to look at other ways to help them.
Is there something else wrong? While abnormal behaviour can be a sign of boredom, it can also indicate something else is wrong, particularly if there is a sudden change in behaviour. A trip to your veterinarian can rule out other causes of abnormal behaviour, such as illness or injury.
If enrichment does not yield an improvement in your greyhound’s behaviour, you may also consider seeking help from a dog trainer or a veterinary behaviourist.
For more information on abnormal behaviours in greyhounds and how to identify, monitor, prevent and manage them, please visit the Abnormal Behaviours in Greyhounds Factsheet here.
Understanding and managing fear in greyhounds
Anyone who has been in the greyhound industry for any length of time will have seen greyhounds which are ‘spooky’, ‘high-strung’, ‘nervy’ or just plain scared. These dogs can be difficult to handle, both at home and at the track, and can be a challenge to get race ready due to the fact that their body is constantly in a state of stress.
What causes fearfulness, and is there any way to prevent it?
Any behaviour that we see in our dogs is a combination of:
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- The dog’s genetic temperament
- Any learned experiences (both good and bad)
- The effect of the environment the dog is in at any time
Fear is a normal part of behaviour – in fact it is vital for survival in the wild. What isn’t normal are high levels of fear that make the animal unable to function normally in its environment.
Genetic Temperament
Usually greyhound breeders are trying to breed for speed and strength for racing above all other traits. In their quest for speed, they may overlook some other traits in their breeding animals in the process. Interestingly, fear is HIGHLY heritable, meaning that it is easily passed on to the pups from the parents. If you mate a nervy bitch to a high-strung dog, chances are you will produce pups that will have a strong tendency towards nervousness.
Nervy or anxious brood bitches also have an added affect on temperament as the pups watch and model their behaviour on their mother’s behaviour during their early development.
Learned Experiences
During a dog’s life there are thought to be special learning periods where experiences, or lack of them, can have a much more pronounced effect on the adult dog. Often referred to as the ‘Socialisation Period’ the first important learning period is from 3 weeks to 3 months of age. During this time puppies learn what the world is about and develop social skills – with people, other dogs, and other animals. During this time pups that are exposed to a wide variety of experiences – sights, sounds and places – learn that these are normal parts of their world, and aren’t to be feared. Pups that have little or no experience apart from the company of other dogs may become less able to adjust in future when their world suddenly changes.
It is also thought that there is a ‘fear period’ at around 7-8 months of age. Bad experiences in this period seem to have a greater effect long term when compared to bad experiences at other ages.
Good breeders make a point of ensuring their youngsters are not simply confined to their pen with their littermates. They make sure the pups get out and experience the world, meet people (adults and children), both within the safety of the litter, and on their own. They take their pups on car trips, maybe to experience the sounds and smells of the race track, or just for the ride in the dog trailer with an older, relaxed dog that is a good traveller. They handle their pups often, and introduce them to ‘chase’ games, walking on leash, wearing a collar, and walking on different surfaces.
Context and Environment
Learning does not just happen early in life, it happens every day throughout the dog’s life. If a dog has a bad experience, it will relate that to the behaviour that they were doing at that time, as well as the location and context at the time. Context refers to things that are happening at the same time (people present, things in the environment, time of day and so on).
For example, if a greyhound goes to the vet after a race with a broken toe he will be in some amount of pain. If during the examination the vet puts pressure on the toe, or moves it about causing even more pain, then the dog will associate the pain (a bad experience) with what is happening at the time.
Depending on the dog and what prior experiences it has had in this environment, the outcome from this one negative vet visit may be minor, or it may lead to a serious fear of the vet. Dogs with confident temperaments, who have had lots of good experiences in similar situations, will probably recover from this one bad experience, but nervous dogs can get to the point where they are so fearful that they become nearly impossible to examine.
Does it matter if my greyhound is fearful?
Greyhounds that are anxious or high strung are very difficult to manage and rarely make really good race dogs. Because their bodies are constantly responding to day-to-day experiences with a physiological fear response (preparing the dog for the fight, flight or freeze response) it can seriously affect their weight, condition, hydration status, and acid-base balance. Long term it can lead to chronic health problems (similar to people who are under constant stress).
- High levels of anxiety often lead to excessive panting, even when the weather is not hot. Panting leads to an increased loss of fluids and electrolytes, and can seriously alter the dog’s acid-base balance. These dogs can become quickly dehydrated, and will recover poorly after a run.
- Fuelling the fear response burns calories. Nervous dogs tend to need to eat a lot more than a calm dog of similar weight and size to hold their condition. These dogs will often lose condition very quickly if they do not eat, and may not eat if they are particularly stressed.
- Nervous dogs often respond to stressful events in other ways. A common example is the dog that develops diarrhoea every time it becomes stressed. Once the bowel becomes involved, the dog can lose fluids, electrolytes and calories very quickly. The classic example of this is the dog that gets the ‘trots’ or the ‘squirts’ when you travel to race meets that are further away than normal. This restricts you to racing locally as the dog rarely arrives in any shape to compete.
- Chronic low grade health problems often sideline these dogs. They are always the first to get sick in your kennel. Their bodies are so stressed that their immunity falls, and they become prone to infection, and can become anaemic, develop skin problems or more serious problems like pneumonia and other infections.
- These dogs will have often ‘run their race’ before they get out of the kennels. The stress of travelling, arriving at the track, being examined, and then sitting in the kennelling area for an hour or so can really take it out of a fearful dog. By the time their race comes around they have already spent most of their energy.
What can be done to prevent fear?
- Breeders can make a big difference in preventing fear by choosing breeding stock that is calm and confident.
- Breeders can also make sure their pups are well handled and socialised.
- Expose young pups to all of the things they will experience during their careers – tables and ramps, cars, dog trailers, handling by a variety of people, the sound of the lure, even the starting boxes. Make these experiences pleasant.
- Make sure that exposure to ‘good’ experiences continues throughout the rearing process – don’t just send the dog to the farm for a year and expect it to cope when you decide it is time to break it in. By putting a bit of work in early, the breaking process will be far less stressful for the dog, easier for the breaker, and much more likely to be successful.
Fear of loud noises
Fear of loud noises such as thunderstorms, fireworks or gunshots is quite a common complaint from dog owners of all breeds. The worst times of the year tend to be around New Year’s Eve when there are lots of fireworks, and in spring and summer when significant storms are more likely to occur.
This can have significant racing implications associated with a greyhound showing signs of distress during storms or loud noises. Fear responses to a thunderstorm the night before a race could derail their whole racing program. Instead of resting, your greyhound is using essential energy as part of the fear response and tiring themselves before they race.