Greyhound Races Fade, With Many Track Owners Eager to Get Out COUNCIL BLUFFS, Iowa - Not many people attend the races here at Bluffs Run Greyhound Park anymore. Aside from a few dozen aging diehards cheering the dogs from the shabby grandstand, the gambling-inclined prefer to take their chances amid the bright lights and constant action of the casino downstairs. But even though the races are losing millions of dollars each year, the owners are required by law to keep the greyhounds running six days a week. After a decade in which more than half the greyhound tracks in the country have closed, many of the remaining operations have survived thanks to the model used at Bluffs Run. Over the years, the tracks, which were there first, won permission from states to add slot machines and poker tables under the condition that a chunk of the profits go to the dog races - essentially subsidizing one form of gambling with another. Now, after years defending greyhound racing against attacks that it is inhumane, a growing number of track owners are, to the astonishment of opponents and the dismay of fans, joining the critics among the animal rights groups. Complaining that they are being forced to spend millions of dollars a year to subsidize a pastime that the public has all but abandoned, greyhound track owners in Iowa, Florida and Arizona have been lobbying for changes in the law that would allow them to cut the number of races, or even shut down their tracks, while keeping their far more lucrative gambling operations running. Though the legislative outcome is in doubt in the short term, the effort has intensified the concern that the end may be near for a century-old pastime that many regard as a blue-collar incarnation of horse racing. "There is no reason to continue spending money on a dying sport," said Bo Guidry, general manager at the Horseshoe Council Bluffs casino complex, which includes Bluffs Run. Caesars Entertainment, which owns the operation and was required to spend $10 million last year on dog racing, has even offered to pay the state $49 million over the next seven years for the right to close the track. The reversal is regarded as a betrayal by those who earn their paychecks - or lose them - at the greyhound tracks. Though many of the racing supporters acknowledge that the sport cannot survive financially on its own, they argue that operations like Bluffs Run should not be allowed to abandon dog racing for greater profits after using it as justification to expand into other forms of gambling. "The racing end was used as a ticket to help them acquire those licenses," said Gary Guccione, secretary-treasurer of the National Greyhound Association, which is based in Kansas, whose last track closed two years ago. And now they're trying to push racing out. For the animal rights groups opposed to racing, the unexpected alliance with track owners has broadened the case from a moral argument about the treatment of the dogs - which spend much of their lives in confinement, can suffer debilitating injuries while racing and are put up for adoption at the end of their careers - to a business-focused argument against government mandates. "We've been fighting the racetrack owners for years, and to suddenly have them as allies takes some getting used to," said Carey Theil, executive director of Grey2K USA, a nonprofit group focused on ending greyhound racing. But in a lobbying effort it's very helpful. There are now 22 tracks in 7 states, down from 49 tracks in 15 states a decade ago, according to Grey2K. Some tracks have gone out of business, others were shut down through legislation and most of the survivors rely on other gambling revenue. In Florida, home to more than half of the remaining tracks, owners had expected legislation to pass this year that would allow them to cut back dog racing while keeping other gambling operations. A similar measure stalled last year despite bipartisan support, and it once again appears to have died in the Legislature. Isadore Havenick is lobbying for that legislation on behalf of his family-owned company in Florida, which has run racetracks in the state for six decades. He said the races were losing millions of dollars. "The only time there's a large crowd of people watching dogs is when people get up from the poker tables to smoke," he said. David Schwartz, director of the Center for Gaming Research at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, said that the decline in interest in dog racing appears to be more intense than what has happened with horse racing. "All live racing is declining in popularity," he said. It's just not as impulse-oriented, as convenience-oriented as most gambling is today. Bluffs Run opened in 1986, when the sport was still growing. But it has seen a steady drop in wagers on live races since the beginning, from $122 million that first year to $4.6 million in 2010, according to the Iowa Racing and Gaming Commission. The state's other dog track, in Dubuque, dropped from $64 million to $1.6 million in the same period.