Greyhound Air

It’s the stuff of paperback romance: There’s the poor orphan outcast, career in the tank, condemned to death row. Then a titled Briton swoops down from the sky and carries her off to a new life of ease and affection.

In this story, that really happens. But the beneficiaries are furry, fast and frustrated by a life of chasing elusive rabbits.

Maggie McCurry, a Studio City resident who can claim the title Lady of Manningham back home in England, is the founder of Wings for Greyhounds--the first greyhound air shuttle rescue service in the nation. In an aged twin-engine Beechcraft, she flies retired racing dogs from a Tucson track to California adoption kennels in Acton, Gilroy and Redding.

“Maggie got greyhound fever really bad,” said one greyhound rescue worker, who credits the flight service with helping to ensure new lives as pets for some of the thousands of greyhounds that are otherwise routinely slaughtered once they get too old to win.

McCurry came to Hollywood two decades ago to be an actress. But her show business aspirations died long ago, and her Hollywood marriage ended up on the rocks. She took up flying, earning a commercial pilot’s license, but even that became boring.

Then 18 months ago, a greyhound with soft eyes and a washed-up racing career turned her life around. McCurry credits Lanky Lance--the dog she now owns--with propelling her into the greyhound rescue movement that has mushroomed nationally in the past few years.

“I had been casting around for something to do, jobwise, so I came up with this,” McCurry said. “It self-evolved. It found me and turned into a full production. There’s certainly enough work to keep me and my airplane busy.”

McCurry’s uncle in England owned greyhounds, a breed that dates back more than 4,000 years and is considered one of the oldest on Earth.

Greyhounds, which come in a variety of colors, were depicted in ancient Egyptian drawings. At one time in Europe, they could be owned only by royalty.

McCurry averages three to four flights a month, each time carrying two dogs--the capacity, along with a co-pilot, of her 1960 aircraft. She removed the rear seats in the plane and replaced them with piles of comforters and pillows for the dogs to curl up on. The dogs wear special harnesses to protect them in case of turbulence.

“I feel like Mrs. Noah, plodding along across the desert with animals, two by two,” McCurry said.

Although she incorporated as a nonprofit business, McCurry said she bears most of the expenses herself. The trips cost about $300--or $150 per dog--mostly for fuel. She said she transported about 50 dogs last year.

“I have something to do every week,” she said. “If I had more money and a bigger plane, I could do more.”

McCurry can fly dogs to their destination in less than three hours. This makes the trip far easier on the dogs, which otherwise would have to be cooped up in cages on a truck, sometimes for as long as 30 hours.

She gets dogs from Gary and Lorri Tracy, who operate the Greyhound Adoption League in Tucson and rescue 50 to 70 greyhounds a month from the track there. Unlike the track 120 miles north in Phoenix, where top dogs compete for purses six times as rich, racers cut from the starting gates at Tucson face a bleak future.

The Tracys find homes for about 250 dogs a year from their own shelters in Tucson and El Paso. The rest are sent to four adoption groups in California and two others in Utah and Idaho, Lorri Tracy said.

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When she learned of McCurry’s offer to help, Lorri Tracy said, “I was ecstatic! It saves my husband another whole day of driving and makes it a lot easier.”

An estimated 40,000 greyhounds were destroyed each year before the first adoption program began in 1987 at a Florida racetrack. Now, there are more than 220 greyhound rescue groups nationwide, some partially funded by the greyhound breeding and racing industry, which placed 18,000 of the sleek dogs in private homes in 1996. Still, 9,500 retired racers were killed.

The killings, coupled with horror stories of abuse and mistreatment of the dogs, have been at the heart of bitter political battles between the racing industry and animal protection groups.

The industry, led by the National Greyhound Assn., has met the criticism by attempting to police itself. Random inspections of breeding farms have weeded out a dozen or so people who have been banned from the industry for life. And leaders urge breeders to produce quality, not quantity, reducing the number of unwanted dogs. In 1996, 36,688 puppies were born, a 29% decline from 52,000 in 1991, the first year statistics were kept.

Many animal advocates are still working hard to shut down the industry, lobbying state leaders to ban dog racing as cruel.

Dog races were held briefly in California in 1919, but since then opponents have managed to keep the sport illegal here.

Nationwide, eight greyhound tracks have closed within the last three years, not necessarily because of pressure from animal activists but because of economic conditions, said Joan Belle Isle, president of the Greyhound Project Inc., a Massachusetts-based organization started three years ago to support rescue groups.

“Casinos, riverboats and lotteries have deeply eroded the number of people who would otherwise be going to tracks,” Belle Isle said. Many breeders are retiring just because they can no longer make a living, she said.

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McCurry says she stays out of the political debate.

“I just try to deal with the dogs that have a problem today,” she said. “Eventually, by doing that, we will take care of the dogs tomorrow.”

A list of greyhound adoption agencies can be found on the Internet at:

https://www.adopt-a-greyhound.org