Abstract

This is an accepted article with a DOI pre-assigned that is not yet published.

Roo and I first encountered each other in the hours following invasive surgery to amputate her injured hind leg. Roo is a greyhound, who emerged from the racing industry with her life, though sadly not her limb, and where she, and others of her kin, are routinely commodified and ultimately downwardly discarded by this animal use industry. But other kinds of extractive experiences may also await greyhounds like Roo. Repurposed ex-racing ‘pet’ greyhounds are valued for their passivity and for perceptions of them as sweet, gentle and docile dogs. Paradoxically, such imaginations continue to anonymise greyhounds, disregarding their self-determined acts of intention and care and blurring the recognition of subjectivity for which advocates fight so tirelessly.

 

As an act of re-individuating other animals rendered forgettable and replaceable by animal use industries, Roo’s tale utilises biographical narrative to tell the story of one greyhound’s life. Deploying care as a tripartite condition, which places other animals as active agents in care ethics scholarship, this chapter underlines the political and material resonance of caring animals like Roo, and the caring relationships she determined to make. By descriptively narrating Roo’s intimate relationships and juxta positioning this with the continued inequities which continue to trouble post-racing greyhound life, I call on advocates, activists and rescuers to engage a more critical examination of our extractive relationships with greyhounds and to contend with how this (re)cycle impacts the greyhounds themselves. Yet this isn’t a story of inspiration for the able-bodied, nor is it a moralistic trope about overcoming adversity. Roo is an active participant in her own efforts towards liberation, and her story reminds us of who animals are, beyond what humans have shaped them to become. 

Keywords: multispecies care, animal subjectivity, greyhounds