The world of greyhound racing, a fixture in Massachusetts for 65 years, awaits a life or death decision in Tuesday's ballot referendum.

The cover of this Sunday's Globe Magazine. Read it online The world of greyhound racing, a fixture in Massachusetts for 65 years, awaits a life or death decision in Tuesday's ballot referendum.

By Judith Gaines, Globe Staff, 11/05/00

On this day, Lady Cactus departs from her normal routine. When owner Carl Petricone lets her out of her cage to play in a sandy pen at the kennel, she doesn't cavort with the other greyhounds. She doesn't bark or roll over or flirt with a dogfriend named Sabrina. (Cactus is a greyhound who, as Petricone puts it, "prefers women.") A small, sweet-faced, fawn-colored dog with golden eyes and a docile disposition, Lady Cactus is a fierce competitor and the hottest dog at the Wonderland Greyhound Park in Revere. She has a pack of stellar performances and an unbroken string of five stunning, come-from-behind wins. So on this day when she will put her record on the line in a much-anticipated evening race, she sits quietly at the back of the pen conserving her energy, paws demurely crossed in front of her.

The competition for the evening race includes George Beck, a veteran brindled dog who last year broke the park's all-time record for the most in-the-money finishes in one season, placing first, second, third, or fourth in 54 eight-dog races. Many observers expect him to win tonight. But the odds-on favorite is Kintyna, a promising rookie from the North Shore Kennel. It's the dominant team that all the other kennel owners want to beat, the Wonderdogs of Wonderland.

Petricone, a Lynnfield resident who has worked with greyhounds since 1978, is trying to make his Anawan Kennel number two. He raises 30 to 50 pups a year on a ranch in Oklahoma - his farm club - and has a good eye for talent. He bred and raced Kid Creole, a big black greyhound who placed first 86 times in 169 starts from 1993 to 1996. Petricone says this dog "ran down more leads than the FBI," trailing and then overtaking the leaders in race after race. The Kid was so popular that he had his own groupies who came to Wonderland just to see him run.

They dubbed the dog "The Beast of the East," "The Real Deal," and "The Black Cadillac," and on the night he retired, he lapped the track one last time riding in a black Cadillac limousine. Then he signed autographs by dipping his paws in a dog bowl full of ink. Wonderland assistant general manager Ron Wohlen calls the Kid "our ranking living legend." Petricone, a 47-year-old bachelor whose life is wrapped up in his dogs, calls him "my son."

Now the Kid, who is 9 years old, has a few gray hairs on his narrow, alert-looking face. He occasionally visits Petricone's Oklahoma farm to serve as a stud and otherwise spends his days a few cages down from Lady Cactus at the Anawan Kennel. It's not unlike the 11 other kennels at the Lynn compound, where about 1,100 greyhounds are kept when they're not racing. The compound sits on the banks of the Saugus River, by a small boatyard, an auto repair shop, and, across the street, Lynn's General Electric plant. It's a collection of squat clapboard and cinder-block buildings largely painted in the same drab, gray-green hue.

It looks like a rude sort of prison camp or a community of shanties, connected by dirt lanes and surrounded by a high chain-link fence. No sign identifies the place. A security officer in a guard box at the only entrance grants admittance. Inside the fence, the kennel buildings - like the dogs themselves when they race - are identified only by number. Petricone's building is number 16.

Opening the front door, a visitor enters a small office/kitchen where Petricone keeps food and supplies, a desk, a refrigerator, and an elevated bathtub on wheels in which he mixes 100 pounds of raw-meat and kibble stew for his 62 dogs every day. From this cramped work area, a half door leads into a low rectangular room with a two-tiered row of metal cages on each side. Here the dogs spend most of their day resting on beds of shredded paper, listening to a radio playing rock music or Red Sox games. Petricone swears that they bark when their favorite players come to bat. At the end of the room are three sandy pens where the dogs relieve themselves and exercise about five times a day.

Petricone graduated from Somerville High School, worked briefly as a control agent for New England Merchants Bank and Shawmut Bank, then filled orders in the parts department of BLH Electronics in Waltham. But as a child he loved dogs and had a father who loved gambling, and the two loves came together after he got his first greyhound in 1978. This pooch was Outrageous, a black female whose method of playing was to punch other dogs in the side with her snout, he says. He took her to greyhound school to teach her how to race, but she got thrown out for fighting. He returned her to the breeding farm and bought his second dog, Bufford T. Justice, a red-and-white male with a better disposition but a similar incapacity to race, he soon discovered. He gave that dog away as a pet. But by now he was hooked. "I wanted to get on the inside, to figure out how this worked," he says. He got a job as a helper at the compound, then became an assistant trainer, then a trainer, and he started buying more dogs and racing them. In 1993, when he owned 30 dogs, he opened his own kennel. "We've been very competitive ever since," he says.

He's a jocular man with a slight paunch, a stubbly beard, and a wry sense of humor, and he banters constantly with his dogs. "We're putting you in the nonsmoking section. Your flight will take about nine minutes," he tells Lady Cactus as he loads her into a van to take her to Wonderland for the big night's race. "We hope there's no turbulence."

Turbulence, however, is in the air these days at Wonderland, as it is at the state's other greyhound racetrack in Raynham. A coalition of gambling opponents, animal rights advocates, and other activists, led by Grey2K - an organization that aims to end greyhound racing in the year 2000 - has gathered enough support to put the issue on Tuesday's referendum ballot as Question 3. If passed, the binding resolution would make Massachusetts the first state in the nation to close existing dog tracks. Although six states - Maine, Vermont, Virginia, Idaho, Washington, and, amazingly enough, Nevada - have outlawed greyhound racing, none has done so when the sport was already under way there. The measure, effective June 1, 2001, would eliminate about 1,200 racing industry jobs, 450 of them at Wonderland, and would cut state revenues by $9.4 million in parimutuel betting and other taxes. But racing opponents say it's the only decent alternative for a sport that no amount of regulation can make humane.

These activists are a passionate lot who say that kennel operators are abusing the dogs, warehousing them in unsanitary conditions, feeding them diseased meat, mercilessly racing and then destroying them as soon as age or injury makes them no longer lucrative. Some stand at the entrance to Wonderland's huge and often almost empty parking lot, holding up photos of starving dogs and signs that say things like "Welcome to Cruelty to Animals Dog Park" and "Stop Greyhound Racing in Its Tracks." Others appear at malls and community festivities, passing out pamphlets, showing off their "rescued" adopted greyhounds, and selling red heart-shaped key chains and buttons that urge observers to "have a heart for greyhounds" and "race cars, not dogs." They organized a grass-roots campaign that gathered 150,000 signatures to put the measure on the ballot - about 60,000 more than they needed - and have raised at least $450,000. Despite being outfinanced by the dog track and kennel owners, who have spent more than $1.13 million to fight Question 3, they predict a big win this week.

"I foresee a landslide victory," says Kitty Granquist, 43, a Grey2K founder and Concord resident who works for an organizational-development company called the Learning Circle when she's not embroiled in this dogfight. She says she was selling organic cleaning products two years ago when she met a woman with 10 pets, seven of them greyhounds. The woman told her that puppies that didn't meet racing standards were routinely killed in barbaric ways, "like putting them in burlap bags and pounding them to death," Granquist recalls. She wasn't a dog person - true to her first name, she had four cats - but the story galvanized her into action. She formed the National Coalition of Greyhound Advocates to gather information and resources and began mustering support for legislation to ban dog racing in Massachusetts. When it became clear that the bill would not pass, she decided to push for a ballot initiative. She recruited David Vaughn, a political consultant from Jamaica Plain who happened to own a greyhound, and Grey2K was born.

Now the group, with about 150 core members, 1,000 additional volunteers, and 2,000 donors, is operating at full steam from its headquarters in the basement of a nondescript building in Somerville's Davis Square. The office is one smallish room with four desks, three computers, and a former door, laid across two metal sawhorses, that serves as a work table. Many boxes of pamphlets, press releases, mailing materials, and research documents line the room, all neatly organized. On the walls are maps of territory being staked out for campaign efforts, snapshots of pet owners and their dogs, and professional, studio-style portraits of greyhounds. A large poster quotes Mahatma Gandhi: "The greatness of a nation and its moral progress can be judged by the way its animals are treated."

Asked to document charges of animal abuse, Grey2K staff produced a list of 18 alleged New England cases, 11 in Massachusetts. The cases concern dogs that died from racing injuries or were abandoned, euthanized, burned, starved, or donated for medical research. They include 280 dogs that, according to the State Racing Commission, were euthanized or died from fire or injury from 1996 to 1999. "That amounts to a greyhound killed about once every five days," says Cary Theil, Grey2K's media and research director, "all in the name of entertainment." He adds that underperforming Massachusetts dogs may also be sent to lesser tracks in other states and euthanized when they are deemed unable to win anywhere.

Theil also cites March 1999 testimony before a state legislative committee by John Perrault, shelter manager for the Massachusetts Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals. Perrault said trainers brought about 1,200 greyhound racers to a Pittsfield shelter from 1986 to 1991, to be killed. "I saw wounds, gashes, infections, broken legs that were left untreated," Perrault testified. "I saw dehydration, starvation, infestation of parasites. ... Owners made it clear they wanted the dogs killed" because their racing days were over.

Grey2K also produced a former dog trainer who identified himself to the Globe only as Fred, saying he fears retaliation from track workers. Fred says he worked at five different tracks for three years, including a recent stint at a kennel that raced at Wonderland. This kennel no longer exists, but the abuses he saw were widespread and still continue, he says, downing beer and chicken wings in a dark, almost empty lounge in Somerville, where he feels free to talk. Dogs were fed "4D meat" - from animals that were "dying, disabled, diseased, or down" - received no medical care, and were euthanized at a local veterinary hospital as soon as they stopped winning races, he says. "Even healthy dogs, if you're not making money, you're dead."

He also participated in race fixing, Fred maintains: "We'd make a dead loser come in first by injecting it with adrenaline. I held the dogs and patted their heads while it occurred, right before they were taken to the racetrack. And we'd slow down a favorite by putting a capful of bleach in its mouth. Made it sick as a dog." This sort of thing did not happen every day or at every kennel. "But usually every week or two," he says, "you'd hear that something was going down." By betting on these tips, Fred says, he made "thousands of dollars."

Such stories infuriate other trainers, kennel owners, and track officials, and perhaps no one more than Herb Brenner, the 81-year-old director of racing and presiding judge at Wonderland. He acknowledges that some dogs have been euthanized - when they were too injured or ill to go on racing - and that a few rogue dogmen may have tried something underhanded now and then. But he says charges of sustained animal abuse and race fixing are trumped up, improbable, and, in some cases, flatly impossible. All first- and second-place winners, and any dogs that run significantly better or worse than expected, are routinely tested for stimulants or depressants that would affect performance.

"They don't love these dogs more than I do," he says, referring to critics. "I'd never work anyplace where there was cruelty to animals. And you'll never convince me you can fix an eight-dog race. A little trouble at a turn, one dog bumps into another, and it's enough to throw a dog out of the money. I've heard these stories about race fixing since 1935, but they've never been true."

Brenner is a tall, courtly, cleanshaven guy affectionately referred to around the track as "Uncle Herb," with authority over all the track's licensed employees. Along with two State Racing Commission judges, he watches for rule violations and can call a hearing to weigh allegations and impose sanctions. Maximum penalties are a $150 fine and a 15-day suspension. Most recent hearings have concerned inappropriate personal conduct, such as sexual harassment or the aggravated use of profanity.

A Lynn native, Brenner started working at Wonderland on the day it opened - June 12, 1935 - not as a track employee but as a 16-year-old vendor working the grandstand crowd, selling chocolate-covered ice cream on a stick. He graduated from Salem State College with a degree in business education, got a master's from Boston University in physical education, and played for a Celtics farm club called the Boston Whirlwinds in the late 1940s. After that, he became a "three-way man," he says, coaching athletics at summer camps and high schools, teaching business in high school, and, beginning in 1954, working at Wonderland, where he rose through the ranks.

Brenner never liked gambling and "wouldn't set foot in Foxwoods if you drove me there." But dogs of all kinds always took to him, and he still thrills to a good race.

He says the best racer he ever saw was Rural Rube, the only dog in the history of the sport to be knocked down during a match and go on to win. Rube raced in 1938 and '39, when Wonderland offered only summer seasons, and during both years he won 19 of 22 contests. When Rube retired, a chauffeur-driven limousine with a police escort took him to a testimonial dinner at the Copley Plaza hotel. About 1,500 black-tie guests attended. A photo of the September 19, 1940, dinner shows Rural Rube sitting at the head table with a linen napkin tucked in his collar, paws resting on the tablecloth as he eyes a large tenderloin steak.

Those were the halcyon days, Brenner and other staff say, when Wonderland lived up to its name. Massachusetts legalized parimutuel betting on dogs in 1934, becoming only the third state in the nation to do so. When Wonderland Greyhound Park opened a year later on the site of the abandoned Wonderland Amusement Park, it was the main dog track in the Northeast and an instant hit. On the 17th day of its first season, 15,000 people passed through its turnstiles. For the next 65 years, it was one of the premier tracks in the country. The most famous greyhounds raced there - such as Lucky Pilot, who shot out of the starting gates like a bullet for an early lead that few competitors ever could catch; and Never Roll, who set four world records for speed at Wonderland. On a single night in 1945, more than 26,000 fans crammed into its grandstand and the paved apron in front of it. When he came to work as cameraman in 1964, Steven Barry, a.k.a. Stevie Wonderland, was amazed by the crowds. "If anyone fainted," he says, "they wouldn't fall down. That's how tightly people were packed, shoulder to shoulder."

As other greyhound tracks opened in New England and beyond, Wonderland maintained its preeminence. It was the Boston track, and no other first-tier city had a dog park so close by. In 1984, the track set a New England record with a one-night "handle" - the total amount bet - of $1,086,554. In 1988, annual attendance at Wonderland and the Raynham/Taunton parks topped 3 million - more than twice that for Patriots, Bruins, and Celtics games that year combined.

But the glory days ended in 1991-92, when the Foxwoods casino began to flourish in Connecticut. Dog tracks already were feeling heat from an array of competitors: not only the state lottery, which began in 1973, but scratch tickets, powerball jackpots, gambling boats, and other sports betting. Negative publicity from two tragic kennel fires, protests from animal rights groups, and the growing popularity of Internet gambling also have taken a toll. Wonderland officials, who expected at least 10,000 attendees daily in the 1970s and 1980s, now are thrilled to see 1,000 folks appear. Revenues have been plummeting steadily. From 1990 to 1998, they dropped 69 percent. The renovated, glassed-in grandstand sits dark most of the time, and only the smaller clubhouse remains open. A recent issue of Sports Illustrated ranked dog racing along with jai alai, roller derbies, and organists at baseball games as the endangered "spotted owls" of the sports world.

Those who find the erosion of the industry hardest to bear are surely its stars, the top dogs of this racing world - such as William O'Donnell, 69, who heads the North Shore Kennel. By almost any standard, his kennel is number one. He owns roughly 700 dogs, about 500 more than any other Wonderland kennel. He enters more dogs in Wonderland races than anyone else and has racked up more victories than any other kennel each year for the past seven years. Last year, North Shore set a record with 1,058 wins, more than any other kennel in the country.

The secret of his success, O'Donnell says, is breeding. He oversees this himself, picking the best bloodlines through observation and caninelike intuition. As he puts it, "You've got to be an animal to enjoy this business."

O'Donnell was raised on a vegetable farm in Lynn, where a neighboring uncle owned three greyhounds. Young William loved to run them through the rows of corn. He even created a make-believe track by cutting corners off a cornfield and planting cousins at strategic spots to lure greyhounds around it. He bred his first greyhound in 1958 and has been pouring money into forthcoming litters ever since.

Racing dogs are graded according to their racing record, in descending order from A through D; all dogs age 2 or less are J, for "junior," and dogs that haven't yet won a race are maidens, regardless of sex. They run courses ranging from 516 to 716 of a mile, at speeds up to 42 miles per hour, competing against similarly graded dogs. There are more dogs in the D grade than in any other, and they're the bread and butter of racing, O'Donnell explains, standing outside his kennel at the Lynn compound. He's wearing a moth-eaten sweater and soiled pants, but nonetheless conveys a sense of gravitas when he talks about the racing industry. "People used to joke that I was the King of the D's, but D's are the moneymakers," he says. "They grind out the most wins. It's great to watch the dogs that have desire even if they don't have talent, the ones that just love to race."

His formula for caring for the dogs is the same, talented or not. "Worm 'em, keep their beds clean, feed 'em good, and work 'em," he says, meaning race or exercise them every four or five days, typically. Grey2K's accusations that men like him are greedy and mean to their animals are absurd, he says evenly. "We have a saying: 'You can talk bad about my wife, but don't say nothin' about my dogs.' Do something bad to them, that's fighting material. And the dogs will never trust you again."

Across from O'Donnell's main kennel is the small building where trainer Henry Chin, 42, has spent almost every day for the last 22 years, from 6 a.m. to 11 p.m., following a structured routine with just an afternoon break while the dogs nap. A creature of habit, like them, he has allowed himself just a few vacations, always to Las Vegas, where he can watch simulcast feeds of Wonderland races. "I'm always thinking about my dogs," he says, adding that he prefers them to humans. "My dogs are always happy to see me. They're never in a bad mood."

A Providence native and bachelor who never went to college, he was washing dishes at his family's Chinese restaurant in Warwick, Rhode Island, when friends invited him to Raynham Greyhound Park. He was fascinated by its canine athletes, attended a year-long school for would-be trainers, and landed jobs at the Lincoln track in Providence as a helper, assistant trainer, then trainer. Two years ago, he bought the Ryan Kennel in Lynn, where he keeps the five dogs he owns and boards 55 others. But he's a trainer at heart. Many dogmen say he's one of the best trainers in the country.

Like many in the business, Chin boards other owners' dogs for free. When a dog places in the money, he explains, the owner gets a negotiated percentage of the purse, usually 35 to 50 percent, and the kennel gets the rest after the state and track take their cuts. So he works to stay competitive by keeping his kennel spotless and well organized. Dog trainers are limited in what they can achieve, he says. But he teaches dogs to do small things, such as how to walk with a lead and stay still when they're being groomed, and he tries to keep them in good condition. "You can't make a slow dog go fast. You can make it go a little faster, that's all," he says. "I just try to bring out the best capability."

Chin says he has invited protesters to visit his kennel but that they haven't come. Now, as he waits for the vote on the dog racing question, he feels like a convict on death row. "It's my fate," he says. "Suppose we lose. What do I do with my dogs then? Send them out of state? Euthanize them? I lose my livelihood, what I love to do. The dogs probably lose their lives. And this comes from people who want to help greyhounds."

The last dog farm in Massachusetts is a 40-acre plot of fields and trees with three forlorn-looking pup houses in Bridgewater, owned by Anita Fulginiti, 67, and her four sons. As recently as the 1980s, 15 or 20 breeding farms like theirs dotted the eastern part of the state. But rising land prices and declining industry profits have driven them away. Anita Fulginiti is hanging on in memory of her husband, Frank, who started the business in 1954 and died in 1995, and because, as she puts it, "it's hard to close down a way of life."

Frank's first love was horse racing, and he owned three Thoroughbreds. But when fees for jockeys and stabling costs became prohibitive, he turned to greyhounds. After he and Anita married, they bought an old dairy farm, cleared adjacent woods, renovated some old chicken coops, and created the dog farm. Their farmhouse is full of greyhound memorabilia: programs, photos, clippings, and trophies honoring great dogs they bred - dogs like Prince Proper and Fashion Pinup - as well as statues, figurines, jewelry, a cake holder, a world globe, and more, all with some greyhound image or reference. In good times, they had more than 80 puppies on the farm. Now they're raising just three litters with a total of 20 pups, ages 3 to 11 months. Each litter has its own fenced-in runs, and the mothers live separately in cages in a nearby bungalow where they give birth about twice a year. "It's like having a sports team," says Anita. "You have to have more players ready, you have to keep replacing the stock."

When the pups reach about a year old, she sends them to Oklahoma for six to eight months, where they learn to race by chasing jackrabbits, she says. Son Joe, 40, a history teacher at Fall River Community College who helps at the farm on weekends, notes that greyhounds historically were prized by European royalty for their noble bearing and hunting prowess. "It's in their genes to hunt and kill," he says. "Once they get the taste of blood, something primal takes over. It's what makes them such great competitors."

After this training is finished, the Fulginitis send the dogs to their kennel in Lynn, which now houses about 70 greyhounds. Roughly 90 percent of the dogs they breed will go on to race, Joe says. Those that are too slow or sickly, or too prone to fight, will be sent to one of the state's five greyhound adoption groups that try to find homes for them as pets. The dogs that are not adopted, he says, will be euthanized.

The farm has been losing about $10,000 a year for the last five years, Anita says, and she's reluctant to invest the money that might turn things around until she knows the outcome of Question 3. If it passes, Joe says, they'll have to sell all their dogs or race them out of state. Perhaps they'll develop a Christmas tree farm instead, or a petting zoo, he muses. "Or maybe we'll raise llamas, or herbs."

Back at Wonderland, Carl Petricone is unloading Lady Cactus and six other dogs slated for evening races. "It's Ladies' Night Out," he quips - only his female dogs are racing this night. They're a thin, willowy bunch, and Cactus shivers slightly in the night air as she walks into the paddock. There she's weighed on a large industrial scale - "59 pounds," a judge calls out. Other officials check the tattoos in her ears that record her birth date, parentage, and number in the litter. They also check for body characteristics noted for each animal on index cards, following a classification system invented by a 19th-century French detective to identify murderers and thieves.

After the weigh-in, Uncle Herb walks through the empty grandstand, up a narrow flight of stairs to the rooftop hideaway where he watches every race. A rough wooden walkway, dubbed "Brenner Pass," leads across the roof to a jerry-built set of cubicles that sits like a double-decker bird's nest at the edge of the roof. There he joins two racing judges, a chartman who describes each dog's performance in every race with a short phrase that later appears in the program, and the announcer. Two tiny offices above them house the cameraman and a guy who prints out shots of photo finishes, which he drops to the judges through a hole in the ceiling. "This is the nerve center," says Brenner. "We're nervous, and we've got a lot of nerve."

In the clubhouse, the gamblers are readying their bets. It's a predominantly male, blue-collar crowd, about 450 in all. Surveys show that most come from within 15 miles and are more than 50 years old. Some bring their own food. Most of the employees are graying, too; more than half have worked at the track for more than 20 years.

A few of the gamblers sit in tiered box seats, available for $2, overlooking the track. But most stand in front of TV screens near the betting windows or lounge in several sports bars also equipped with TV monitors, which show the action at Wonderland as well as simulcasts from out-of-state races. An elderly couple from Revere, with a half-dozen teeth between them, say they'll be playing numbers from fortune cookies they got at a Chinese restaurant the previous night. A friend who came with them says he's been betting 2s, 4s, and 6s all week and is ahead so far. "Just go for numbers," he advises. "You can't figure these things." Others bet based on the colors of the dogs' racing blankets, grave-site plot numbers, license plates, phone numbers, birthdays. Assistant general manager Wohlen tells the story of a man who correctly guessed the winners in the first three races a few years ago by betting on dogs listed in the previous night's program, which he picked up by mistake.

For many of these people, the dog races offer a night out, a place to see their friends, something to do instead of staying at home looking at the walls or watching TV alone. They bet just $10 or $20 a night, mainly $2 wagers, and are happy if they win occasionally. But for a few high rollers, like Chris O'Brien, the races are their livelihood. O'Brien is a professional gambler who spends all his working hours studying the dogs and their running styles. He says he bets $20,000 to $30,000 a week and nets a profit of about $40,000 annually. At age 21, he's the kind of fresh young energy Wonderland officials hope to attract to their park. If dog racing has a future, it rests, at least in part, with people like him.

O'Brien, who lives with his mother in Everett, dropped out of Malden Catholic High School. His grades were good, but with his 500-pound bulk, he always felt like an outsider. At Wonderland, though, he's a wunderkind. He has backers and friends who call him for advice, "like a stockbroker," he says. His cell phone rings constantly with calls from folks at other tracks eager to know his picks, which he reveals for a share of their winnings, if he's correct. He also bets other tracks in Florida and Colorado. On his worst day, he lost $1,500 on a dog that came in dead last. On his best day, he won $8,000 on a $4 bet.

He loves the freedom of the gambling life, knowing he is his own boss and can work whenever he feels like it. "It's a humongous thrill," he says, "a real ego trip, when you win big - knowing that you've picked better than everyone else." But he wonders how long Wonderland can survive, with such small crowds. Like most of the track's gamblers, he makes many of his largest bets on simulcast races in other states, where more money is waged and winnings can be higher. But legislation granting simulcast rights at Massachusetts tracks expires January 1, and he knows legislators are unlikely to grant an extension this year. Slot machines could pump new life into the track, but legislators are also unlikely to approve this. "The lottery's way too powerful," he says, sadly. Without simulcasting, he adds, he'll leave Wonderland and gamble in another state.

Shortly after 10 p.m., racetrack workers known as "leadouts" take Lady Cactus and her competitors in the 14th race from their cages in the ginny pit to be reweighed and rechecked for all the proper identifying marks, just to make sure no one has pulled a dog switch. After their muzzles and blankets bearing their racing numbers are secured, the dogs are led through a passageway known as the Dog Walk and out onto the track, where their muzzles and blankets are rechecked and the announcer introduces them to the crowd. The dogs stand in front of the empty grandstand, acknowledging the ghosts of races past, it seems. Then they're escorted to the racing stalls.

Once the dogs are ready, Uncle Herb booms, "Let 'er go-oh-oh," to a man who operates a mechanical lure designed to mimic a rabbit. As the lure heads around the track, the announcer cries, "There goes Swifty." The racing boxes open, and the dogs come bounding out. Veteran George Beck shoots out fast, with Kintyna close behind. At the first turn, they vie for the lead. Lady Cactus is dead last. Then Beck and Kintyna jostle each other, knocking themselves off stride. Lady Cactus sees an opening and makes her move. She splits up two dogs sprinting together well in an outside lane and charges between them, running hard. Now she's passing Ebard Pablo, the long shot, in second place. Then she's passing Blazing Tribute, a small red dog with a momentary lead. And in 30.95 seconds, she crosses the finish line for an electrifying come-from-behind victory.

A few minutes later, Lady Cactus is standing on the sandy track, clearly pleased with herself, hardly even panting. Fans are ecstatic. Prospects for the future of the dog racing industry, however, don't seem as happy. With the simulcasting on which the tracks now depend unlikely to continue next year, track owners await the arrival of slot machines, as one Boston Phoenix writer remarked, "the same way that the Israelites waited for Moses," hoping he would lead them out of the wilderness. But slots may never come. Richard Dalton, Wonderland's president, puts his predicament this way: "The dog racing business hasn't been able to evolve as it should. We're a prehistoric monster trapped inside this building."

Grey2K activists have mounted a formidable campaign. But passage of their ballot initiative may not be necessary to kill the state's greyhound racing industry.