Greyhound Racing

"I taught the 4-H horse club for 11 years. And the little girls would always do a lot better with a horse than the boys. Boys want to act tough, carry a snuff can in their pocket and talk smart. Same thing with dogs. Girls take care of dogs with love and affection."

Ashlee already has her own greyhound and she's right about Addrick, who wins his schooling race. As much as Ashlee loves the greyhounds, though, she shakes her head when asked if she'll go into the family business when she grows up.

Parmetti and Ebbs think slot machines — called Video Lottery Terminals at the tracks — might be the saving grace of Texas dog racing. They are convinced that slots will bring the dog tracks back to life without creating the sorts of vices gambling opponents fear. "You can't create gambling problems," Parmetti says. "If you could, we'd find a way to do it and pack this place out."

Some Democrats, like State Sen. Rodney Ellis, have shown a willingness to support gambling because it would increase much-needed tax revenue. Year by year, the issue seems to be gaining traction. Without gambling, some say all the Texas tracks could be out of business in the next decade.

Casino gambling seems to come up every legislative session, but Kenneth Besserman, legislative director for Ellis, says it came closer to passing this year than in previous years. Even though Ellis has supported casinos, he doesn't agree with what the dog track owners would prefer — slot machines at existing tracks only.

If western Louisiana is any indicator, however, full-fledged casino gambling would generate a lot more money than slot machines at the 13 horse and dog tracks around Texas. Besserman says that video slot machines simply don't generate the kind of excitement Texas needs to draw people back from Louisiana, Oklahoma and New Mexico.

"People are going to come to Texas for VLTs at a dog track in Houston? I don't think that floats many people's boats," he says. If Texas wants to go for gambling, supporters argue, it might as well go whole-hog and build the sort of entertainment palaces that attract Texans to places like Lake Charles and Bossier City.

The West family family raised greyhounds on their farm for decades. The dogs were mainly work dogs that hunted jackrabbits and other pests.

Then, in 1960, one of West's neighbors, Clyde Bond, built a dirt track where locals could bet against each other. At a time when many greyhound breeders used live animals as bait for coursing, the mechanical lure on Bond's track was a humane innovation. Bond put an old pickup truck on blocks in the middle of the track. He attached a cable to the back wheel. He ran the cable around the entire length of the track. By stepping on the accelerator of the truck, the cable would start to move, powering the mechanical lure too fast for the greyhounds to catch.

In the late 1970s, Lady Bird Johnson showed up at Bond's track. West and other greyhound breeders planted a sea of bluebonnets in the middle of the track for her. But things really took off in the 1980s, when hundreds of people gathered. "The excitement in the '80s was that people knew racing would be coming to Texas," West says.

West's wife, Audrey, has made him put most of his dog racing trophies in storage. She says there wasn't room for them anymore, but they also serve as a painful reminder of what they've lost. The dog kennel behind their house now functions as a storage unit, where the couple keeps their power tools and gardening supplies. Their house is a modest, ranch-style place with a well-trimmed yard and plenty of space for a dog to run out back.

At West Motors, West slips in an old VHS tape. Interspersed with highlights of the dog's winning races are fragments of interviews with TV personalities talking to Wake Up's trainer about the famous greyhound. After Wake Up retired, the greyhound became a family pet until he died in 2003.

These days, West spends most of his time on his car dealership, which is thriving in Gonzales and even more so on the Internet. "My main business is the dealership," he says. "If I didn't have that, I'd be starving to death. We couldn't exist in a small town if it wasn't for the Internet. I have to give credit to my sons for having that market in mind."

His two sons, Ferd Jr. and Mark, grew up around the greyhounds but never had their dad's full-blown passion for racing. While father and sons worked at the same dealership, it was easy to differentiate between the two Ferd Wests. "If people called for junior," West Jr. says, "it was for cars. If they called for senior, it was for greyhounds. I grew up with a pooper scooper in my hand."

These days, Ferd West Jr. focuses on selling cars online, through eBay and Auto Trader for the family dealership. "The reason I quit was that I turned 16 and started chasing women," he says. Cars, it seems, impressed the ladies more than the dogs.

russell.cobb@houstonpress.com