On 17 March 2026, the Welsh Government voted to end greyhound racing - making Wales the first UK nation to close the door on an industry responsible for thousands of injuries and deaths. Since its inception in 2005, Hope Rescue has campaigned to end greyhound racing, with the rescue named after Last Hope, a greyhound from Valley Greyhound Stadium in Ystrad Myncach found shot and mutilated on the side of a mountain in Fochriw.  Now we're making sure no greyhound is left behind and adding our voice to the call for a UK-wide ban.

Thanks to years of campaigning, and the support of thousands of people like you, Wales has reached the finish line. Greyhound racing has been part of Welsh life for the best part of a century, and for just as long, dogs have been paying the price for it. The decision to ban greyhound racing means future generations of greyhounds in Wales will never know a starting trap, a whip-round the final bend, or a track vet deciding whether an injury is career ending, or worse.

We're delighted that the day after the announcement in Wales, that Scotland also voted to ban this cruel and outdated activity. However, commercial greyhound racing remains legal in England and Northern Ireland. Every week that continues, more dogs are injured, and more are put down simply to generate a constant livestream of gambling opportunities for the betting industry.  Wales has shown it can be done. We're not stopping until the rest of the UK follows.

Why greyhound racing is cruel

Greyhounds love to run, and racing exploits that instinct, sending dogs hurtling around tight oval tracks at speeds of up to 45mph, and forcing them to run in extremes of temperatures, right up to 33 degrees. Collisions, sharp bends and worn track surfaces mean injuries are a routine, priced-in cost: broken hocks, spinal injuries, head trauma, and in thousands of cases, death.

It's not just what happens on the track. Behind the scenes, welfare organisations have raised serious and long-standing concerns about how racing greyhounds are kept. With racing greyhounds spending an estimated 95% of their time confirmed to kennels, poor kennelling practices have a significant impact on their welfare, and disciplinary hearings consistently highlight substance-related violations and neglect and cruelty. 

With around 84% of dogs licensed to race in the UK bred in Ireland, there are also serious unanswered questions about the number of young greyhounds who are bred for racing but never make it to registration - dogs the industry has, for years, euphemistically referred to as "wastage". The RTÉ Investigates documentary titled "Greyhounds, Running for Their Lives" exposed that nearly 6,000 greyhounds were being killed in Ireland every year because they were deemed too slow or were underperforming.

The scale of harm is documented by the industry's own regulator, the Greyhound Board of Great Britain. Between 2017 and 2025, nearly 4,400 greyhounds died or were put to sleep as a direct result of their involvement in racing, and over 38,000 injuries were recorded on UK tracks. By the age of three and a half, half of all licensed greyhounds are no longer racing - worn out or written off long before most dogs reach middle age. Around 6,000 greyhounds leave the licensed industry every year, and it falls to animal welfare organisations, not the industry, to find them homes.

Commercial greyhound racing has now been abandoned or is being phased out in the vast majority of countries where it once operated with only a handful still permitting commercial racing. That global trend tells its own story: that racing dogs for entertainment no longer has a place in a compassionate world that values animal sentience. Greyhound racing has lost its social licence to operate.

Our part in the fight

Long before Wales made its historic decision, Hope Rescue was already picking up the pieces. Our Amazing Greys project was set up to work directly with greyhounds coming out of the racing industry in Wales and working with rescue partners to ensure they had a safe place to go - assessing their health, treating their injuries, and finding them the kind of home a racing career never gave them a chance at.

Between 2018 and 2021 alone, the project supported more than 200 racing greyhounds. Forty of them arrived with serious, career-ending injuries: fractures, amputations, and orthopaedic repairs that required major veterinary care, all because they were put at risk by running on a greyhound track. Some of these dogs came to us directly from Welsh tracks; others were surrendered by owners with links to them. Either way, the pattern was the same - dogs discarded the moment they couldn't earn their keep.

It's this first-hand experience that's shaped Hope Rescue's role in this campaign. We didn't need to imagine what a ban would mean for dogs like these. We knew as we had witnessed the cruelty of greyhound racing with our own eyes. It's why we started a petition to ban greyhound racing in Wales in September 2021, and why over 35,000 dog lovers signed the petition.

Vanessa Waddon, our founder and CEO says

"I spent far too many nights at Valley Greyhound Stadium, praying that each dog would make it round the track safely. Of course that didn't happen, but the devastating injuries and deaths we witnessed served as the driver of our campaign".

Cut the Chase Coalition

A change like this doesn't happen working in isolation. It happens because organisations come together, collaborate and speak with one united voice. In September 2022, Blue Cross, Dogs Trust and RSPCA undertook internal policy reviews and came out in support of a ban after working with the greyhound industry for a number of years to try and improve welfare. Joining forces with Hope Rescue and Greyhound Rescue Wales, the Cut The Chase Coalition was formed to take forward the campaign, sharing evidence, coordinating pressure on decision makers, and making sure Welsh politicians heard the same strong message. A message that was ultimately successful when in February 2025, the Deputy First Minister and Cabinet Secretary for Climate Change and Rural Affairs announced the historic decision that greyhound racing would be banned in Wales, fully protecting greyhounds from harm and the inherent risks of commercial racing.

Racing remains legal in England and Northern Ireland. We'll keep adding our voice - and our evidence - to the case for a full, UK-wide end to greyhound racing.