A tongue-in-cheek idea for ‘growing the county’

I just learned that Florida has an amendment on its November state ballot which, if passed, will end betting on dog racing in the state. Currently, of the 17 greyhound racing tracks in the United States, Florida has 11. By 2019 there may be thousands of greyhounds needing a new home somewhere in the U.S., Canada, Mexico, etc. 

Now, this got me thinking, not about Ozarkians adopting a greyhound (because that dog don’t hunt) but about dog racing in the county. I’ve been after the county commissioners to come up with any viable idea to reduce the shrinking of our county population. They, on several occasions, have espoused the popular idea that we need more business to grow the county. When asked what they are doing to bring more business in, the answers are somewhat anemic.

I recently did a little (and I do mean little) Google search on successful county growth. I learned that, among other things, a viable county has some type of higher learning presence within the county, that community swimming pools also help, and if we can believe Ted Nugent, hunting game from helicopters will bring magical things to our neighborhood. 

I would like to propose another idea to grow interest in our county, based on the dog-racing thread. However, this would be a dog race of a different breed (see what I did there?). I suggest we have a dog race at our next Hootin an Hollarin festival. Let’s experiment with a race of, say, chihuahuas and see how that goes. If it goes over well, then we can go up in weight class for other dogs. I’ve done a brief market test of this idea and have received several enthusiastic responses.

We usually have a pet show at Hootin an Hollarin, so this could surely be easily added.

Dennis Lawson

Gainesville