Elisa Manna, the greyhound rescuer: “I’ve been finding homes for them for over twenty years”

It seems, then, that a chance meeting of glances really can change a life. This happened twenty-seven years ago to Elisa Manna from Modena, a graphic designer by profession, at a dog shelter in her city where she had gone to adopt a dog. The only animal that didn’t greet her with hopeful, fawning enthusiasm was a greyhound. Remaining motionless, staring at her in that sphinx-like pose typical of greyhounds at rest, she fired the arrow that brought her into Elisa’s life and, above all, would bring thousands more dogs into it, because Elisa discovered that Maya, born in Ireland, came from the Roman greyhound track at Ponte Marconi (“a place of heart-wrenching melancholy”, as Marco Lodoli described it), where animals retired from racing faced a miserable end.

So three years later, in 2002, Elisa founded GACI (Greyhound Adoption Centre Italy) to tackle an emergency: the Rome greyhound track was closing and 370 greyhounds needed to be saved. They gave her free rein, provided she took on the problem of those D’Annunzio-esque dogs in a world now indifferent to the declamations of Stelio Èffrena in "Il fuoco", in which he explained to Foscarina, with canine poetry, that ‘there is no machine more precise and more powerful for its purpose in nature’.

Since then, Elisa, president of Gaci, together with a group of colleagues who have become friends through their shared commitment to the cause, has found – and continues to find – homes for thousands of greyhounds. These include not only greyhounds, but also galgos that have escaped an even worse fate in Spain.

With the regal air about him. I was unaware, however, that shortly afterwards I would be travelling back and forth between Modena and Rome for a while, when the dog track ceased operations due to a gradual decline in revenue. Fortunately, online betting didn’t exist back then: anyone who wanted to bet on the races had to go there in person, and the dogs, once they were no longer competitive, faced a grim fate because very few people at the time would have adopted an adult greyhound. In Italy, they were only ever seen at dog shows: it was said they were ‘crystal dogs’ and that they needed large plots of land. Gaci was the first association set up in our country to save them.

Thanks to our magical madness. We were a group of runaways, still inexperienced and without the internet communication options we have today, as social media didn’t even exist back then. We embarked on an adventure whose outcome we couldn’t foresee, but fortunately we received help from British organisations, sought the cooperation of various dog shelters and made a name for ourselves through word of mouth.

If the environment is favourable, it adapts in no time at all. The greyhound track is a factory of misery, and the change in lifestyle is dramatic for those who have never known stairs, a sofa or a mirror; however, the greyhound settles in well to flat life because it is clean, odourless and lazy, even though it retains a strong predatory instinct. Its athletic abilities are triggered by stimuli with the primal force of a hunter tracking its prey by sight: from hares to wolves, since the dawn of time and all over the world. I would say it is the most cat-like of all dogs.

Particularly Ireland and Spain. Irish greyhounds are retired racing dogs: in their home country, they are regarded as ‘livestock’ in the same way as cows and sheep – farm animals that can be legally put down for a fee of twenty euros. So we have established direct relationships with the owners, who, at the end of the day, are happier to hand the dog over to us than to put it down. The galgos arriving from Spain have never known the racetracks but have spent their lives in the countryside hunting hares and rabbits: when they are no longer needed, the galgueros abandon them or take them to shelters, and although it is less common than before, some people still kill them in the most brutal ways – by throwing them into wells, hanging them or mutilating them. We rescue them from the perreras and bring them to Italy, already fitted with microchips, neutered and with all the necessary vaccinations.

Through adoption fees, donations and the sale of small merchandise. As a charity, we rely on the voluntary support of our members, who are almost like an extended family. We ask our network of adopters, spread across the country, to personally assess whether a new application can be accepted by visiting the homes and getting to know the families. This means that when a dog arrives, there is already an owner ready to collect it, and if the match doesn’t work out, they bring it back. We do not abandon a single greyhound.

At times we’ve reached 200–250, but since the Covid pandemic there’s been a drastic drop. Perhaps people are less psychologically receptive or there’s less money around, but something has changed. The percentage of accepted applications remains unchanged, however, at around thirty per cent. We’re carrying on without playing on people’s emotions.

We do not advocate adoption through heart-wrenching appeals or by playing on people’s sense of guilt. Anyone who wants a greyhound should not be doing a charitable act, but should demonstrate commitment and responsibility.

I’ve had several. The last one, Merlino, died a few months ago.