Christine:

It’s 2011 and I’m sitting at my desk in our basement office just outside Boston, when a photo appears in my inbox. It’s a stunning greyhound wearing a wire mask. This dog is being held at the worst racetrack in the world, the Canidrome in China, where no dog ever gets out alive. In this moment, I know only one thing: “I have to save this dog.”

Carey:

See 20 years earlier, Christine was taking her dog on a routine morning walk, when they were run down by a speeding train.

Christine:

My dog Kelsey pulled me from the direct path of an oncoming train. And when I eventually awoke from my coma, I realized that she had saved my life and that I had a debt to pay. I promised myself that if I should ever be able to walk and talk, and care for myself again, that I would spend my life helping dogs.

Carey:

And so when Christine told me she was going to shut down a Chinese dog track, I thought she was crazy. But I also believed her. Christine and I met as young activists during the first political campaign to end greyhound racing in Massachusetts. I was 22 years old and thought I knew everything.

Christine:

Once, when we were disagreeing on strategy, he actually said to me, “I’m the smartest person you’ll ever meet.”

Carey:

Yeah, I really said that.

Christine:

In his defense, the Boston Globe did once refer to Carey as “The wunderkind of the animal rights movement.” He was a chess prodigy who is now a chessmaster. And between his strategy and my tenacity, we thought we could change the world.

Carey:

Each of us, even the most cynical politician, has a child inside who desperately wants to do something that is genuinely good. We all want to make a difference.

Christine:

So we write letters, hold protests, wave our signs, and argue on social media—but nothing gets better.

Carey:

Many times, we lose faith in democracy, and convince ourselves that lasting change cannot be achieved. All the while, the “bad guys” are actually engaging in the political process and getting what they want. And that’s exactly what was happening with greyhound racing.

Christine:

At one time, over 50,000 dogs in the US alone endured lives of confinement and suffered serious injuries while racing. Greyhound racing was a multi-billion dollar gambling enterprise, formed in the 1920s by organized crime. Mobsters joined with dog breeders and together, they launched a business built on the exploitation of greyhounds. At its peak in the early 1990s there were 70 operational dog tracks and $3.5 billion bet each year. In fact, greyhound racing was the 6th largest spectator sport in America.

Carey:

And so we decided, “Yeah, we can take that down.” Now to be fair, we weren’t the first to try to do something about dog racing.

Christine:

But the vast majority of activists had taken the standard approach, myself included. For years, we held signs and sent out press releases. We also did stunts. One time, some radio shock jocks were hosting a “worst scar contest” at the local dog track. Well, because of my accident I had lots of scars, so I entered! And when they put me on air and asked, “Why are you here?” I jumped in and said, “Because greyhounds are dying and this place needs to be shut down.” Of course, they picked me right up and threw me out the door … Early on, we thought that just by exposing the industry we would end it. It was just like today, when young activists believe that if a social media post gets enough likes or shares, the problem will take care of itself. But we came to learn that change is not self-executing.

Carey:

Meanwhile there were large, well-funded animal protection groups who wouldn’t fight the industry, because they thought the dog tracks were too rich and too powerful to challenge. So the question became, “How do we change the world, where so many others have failed?” One day, Christine was out protesting with her friends when a man driving by stopped his car and asked, “What are you doing?”

Christine:

“I’m closing down this dog track.”

Carey:

And he said, “No you’re not. Protesting will never work. The only way to win is to take the issue directly to the voters.” His name was David, and he had a deep history in local politics, so we tried to do just that.

Christine:

And over the course of 9 weeks we would need to collect 150,000 signatures, by hand, just to get the question on the ballot.

Carey:

And our question to the voters was, “Should greyhound racing be outlawed in Massachusetts?” We got the signatures, and managed to raise $500,000 to run a few TV ads, which sounds like a lot of money, but the track owners spent nearly $2 million dollars fighting us.

Christine:

On the day of the vote, I knew the greyhounds were going to win. We had gathered all those signatures and we were right! And when the votes were tallied, it was 51 to 49… we had lost.

Carey:

I was devastated. It wasn’t just that we had lost. I knew greyhounds would continue to suffer and die because we had failed them. But when we think back on that first major defeat, we now realize it was a blessing. It fueled our fire to keep fighting. And so instead of giving up, we made a bold decision: We would form a national organization to shut down all the dog tracks in America. Even though at that point our track record was one loss in one state.

Christine:

That was our first big lesson for successful activism. If you want to change the world, you must persist through failure.

Carey:

And fail we did. Over the next decade we tried to pass laws all across the country to help these gentle dogs: to ban the drugging of greyhounds—

Christine:

We lost.

Carey:

To prohibit racing in extreme temperatures—

Christine:

We lost.

Carey:

To end dog track subsidies—

Christine:

We lost that too.

Carey:

We kept losing over and over and over. Meanwhile, we had been sued for $10 million dollars by a track owner, and the industry was using expensive lawyers to stop us from returning to the ballot. We realized we needed our own attorney, but we couldn’t afford one. So, Christine had a brilliant idea:

Christine:

Why don’t I become a lawyer?

Carey:

So for the next four years she worked full time fighting for greyhounds during the day and attended law school classes at night.

Christine:

With Carey’s chess-like understanding of the political system, and my new understanding of the law, we finally began to achieve small victories. I knew we needed evidence to make our case. So I wrote a bill to force dog tracks to report on the injuries and deaths of greyhounds to the public for the first time. This doesn’t seem like a big deal, but it was a game change. Once the tracks had to admit how many dogs were breaking their legs and dying, we were able to move past a he-said, she-said debate so that the greyhounds could speak for themselves.

Carey:

As we gained momentum and confidence, we started to build our own, unique process for what successful activism could be. In 2008 we went back to Massachusetts where it all began, and asked voters to end greyhound racing. This time, the dogs won.

Christine:

And just like that, two powerful tracks disappeared overnight, and 2,000 dogs finally received the second chance they deserved.

Carey:

Next stop, Florida.

Christine:

In the United States, Florida was the beating heart of the industry, with more tracks than all other states combined. They had not just 2, but 12 operating tracks in the Sunshine State.

Carey:

After winning in Massachusetts, we thought there was nothing we couldn’t do. But we were wrong. Over the next ten years we fought for greyhounds in the Florida legislature, and lost. We lost year after year. We tried everything that had worked so far, and got nowhere—for an entire decade.

Christine:

Meanwhile dogs were suffering and dying. Just when it seemed hopeless, we found something we never expected to find: a decent politician.

Carey:

Believe it or not they still exist! In 2018 he helped us bring the greyhound issue to the voters. It was a hard fought campaign, and I still remember being in the car on election day, listening to the radio when the first votes started coming in. First one county, then another. We looked at each other and said, “We might actually win this.” When the night was over, a massive 69% of people had voted to end dog racing. This was the beginning of the end of greyhound racing in the United States.

Christine:

That period of our lives taught us a second important lesson for successful activism: It’s not just about changing minds, but changing the law.

Carey:

So … It’s 2011, and Christine’s sitting at her desk in our basement office in Boston, when a photo shows up in her inbox. She sees the image of a beautiful dog trapped at the worst racetrack in the world, where 400 greyhounds are killed each year.

Christine:

His name was Brooklyn, and we set out to save him.

Carey:

What had started in Massachusetts all those years ago was now spreading across the world. People had begun speaking up for greyhounds and demanding the end of dog racing, and Brooklyn became the face of this global movement. We did everything we could think of to try and help him. We traveled to Macau. We spoke to the press. We even presented a petition to the Mayor with the signatures of over 300,000 people, but we got nowhere.

Christine:

But we still didn’t give up. The turning point came when we reached out to the leader of the local animal shelter, who was well connected and politically savvy. When we told him about all the greyhounds dying at the Canidrome, he said to us, “I will help you.”

Carey:

Even with the help of this new ally, it still took seven long years and a lot of campaigning, but the Macau government eventually agreed to shut down the track. We airlifted 532 surviving dogs to rescue groups across the world. And on Valentine’s Day 2019, we met Brooklyn for the very first time. Christine threw her arms around him.

Christine:

I still couldn’t believe he was alive. After living in a cement cell for so many years, he was thin and had lost most of his teeth. And his health issues were not over. Only a few weeks after joining our family he was diagnosed with cancer. But Brooklyn was a fighter. He beat the odds and lived with us for three glorious years, the best years of our life.

Carey:

Over the course of the last 25 years we learned many lessons about successful activism. First, that you must be willing to persist through failure, and even let it fuel you. Second, that you can’t just change minds, you must also change the law.

Christine:

And finally, we learned the most essential lesson of all: successful activism is a marathon, not a sprint.

Carey:

It’s hard to imagine that a spotted dog would become the inspiration for a worldwide fight, that the campaign would end greyhound racing, and that after a decade of suffering, that same dog would come home to us. Yet it happened. It proved to us that politics can still be a force for good.

Christine: