Greyhounds love to run, but the way they compete is paramount
If you want to breed greyhounds, your dogs must be in excellent shape, well built and exercise all the time. Fortunately, greyhounds love to run, and that’s what they need to do to stay at their top speed. Of course, running form is just as important in a greyhound, if not more so, as it is in an Olympic sprinter. Each incremental efficiency gain translates into faster speed and more power for longer run times. If you want your greyhound to win, you must be thinking here. The way you compete is really paramount. Okay, so let’s talk, okay?
If you let your young Greyhound race with less competitive dogs that are not at the same level of fitness, he will pick up bad habits. This is because greyhounds are a species that mimic the running styles of the other dogs they play and train with. Don’t get me wrong, they are genetically superior regardless, however, even if your dog is of a superior breed and out faster than everyone else, you can still have problems with his form. Training a dog for perfect form is difficult. Yes, there are prosthetic-type supplements that you can have your dog wear to make sure he doesn’t expend extra energy, but they’re not good for everything.
A few years ago, DARPA had an interesting new device, a robotic cheetah. It seems to me that in the future this robotic cheetah could be customized and used in the form of a greyhound racing dog to help learning dogs become better sprinters and more efficient runners. No, that robotic technology isn’t here yet, but we have all the computational math needed to make this work. Then it would just be a matter of having your greyhound racing dogs chasing after the robotic greyhound android. They would eventually mimic his form as they ran.
In fact, this could be a very good way to train these elite racing dogs, while making sure you don’t have to watch them literally every step of the way. Has this kind of thing been used before? No, and there are other technologies that may enter the scene before robotic greyhound racing dogs.
Holographic images could be another, or lining the track with flat screens using a digital image of a 3D dog running. No matter what we choose in the future, those that use the science of movement and canine ergonomics will prevail due to superior technologies and training equipment. Please consider all this and think about it.
