Valpos Coggins to help rescue retired racing dogs
By Tom Wyatt Post-Tribune correspondent October 5, 2011
Photo By Jeffrey D. Nicholls~Sun-Times Media
Jeff Coggins told himself five years ago, when he ran his first Chicago Marathon, that he would never run one again.
The training took a toll on his body. And the race itself was downright brutal.
The 49-year-old Valparaiso resident ran that year to raise money for a greyhound rescue group he had recently become involved with. He raised $360 that year. Not a lot, he said, but better than nothing.
“It certainly wasn’t worth the abuse,” Coggins said half-jokingly.
Five years later, Coggins is the president of that rescue group, American Greyhound. And he’s running the marathon again — against his better judgment — for the dogs.
“I’m looking forward to it being over,” Coggins said with his dry sense of humor.
Coggins doesn’t plan on finishing the race quickly. He knows it will take him a while. But he’s not running the race for himself. He’s running it for the dogs that stole his heart in 2000 when he and his wife Barb adopted their first grey, a retired racer named George.
A little while later Coggins and his wife adopted another greyhound, a blue brindle no one wanted because of several issues it had. That one was named Harry.
George and Harry have since passed on. But Coggins became heavily involved with American Greyhound group in 2005 when Jeff joined the board of directors. They have since fostered more than 100 dogs. Like others involved with the group, they house the dogs after they come off the track until they find permanent homes through adoption.
“They’re big couch potatoes and extremely lazy, which surprises a lot of people,” Coggins said.
They’re not built for marathons, but they are lightning fast, able to reach speeds in short bursts of close to 40 mph.
“They’re very graceful, elegant,” Coggins said.
Greyhound racing is still conducted in several states. American Greyhound gets its dogs mostly from tracks in Florida and Alabama. Before racing shut down in Wisconsin in 2009, the group got many of its dogs from tracks there.
But the sport is dying. And when that day comes when those still-existing tracks close their doors, it will cause in influx of retired racing dogs that have no place to go. If they don’t get taken by rescue groups, they likely face euthanasia.
And that’s what Coggins and 10 others who will race for American Greyhound in Sunday’s Chicago Marathon are running for — that day when all those dogs need homes and the care that comes before they can be placed into homes.
“We’ve got to maintain the dogs that are coming off the tracks,” Coggins said. “And we’ve got to prepare for what’s coming down the pike.”
Coggins owes his love of the dogs and his involvement with the greyhound group to Bill Marshall, the former president of American Greyhound who died in 2008 after a bout with cancer. Marshall convinced Coggins to carry on the American Greyhound mission.
“I think he’d be thrilled with where we’re at right now and thrilled with where we’re going, seeing our name on the charity page of the Chicago Marathon,” Coggins said. “Bill was a distance runner, too, and I’m sure he’d be ecstatic.”
