DATE: Thursday, October 2, 1997             TAG: 9710020487

SECTION: LOCAL                   PAGE: B2   EDITION: FINAL 

TYPE: Column 

SOURCE: Guy Friddell 

                                            LENGTH:   50 lines

THE GRACE OF GREYHOUNDS WILL BE ON DISPLAY SUNDAY AT BEACH

When it comes to sheer numbers, the most elegant company you will find Sunday anywhere hereabouts will be a grace of greyhounds, more than 150 commingling at a picnic at Woodstock Park on Providence Road in Virginia Beach.

Admission is free, refreshments are inexpensive. What you do is look at the abounding greyhounds and marvel at their decorum and their elasticity when they run.

Surely they should be called grace hounds.

These annual gatherings at Woodstock Park remind me of scenes of British high society strolling about with top hats and parasols in ``My Fair Lady.''

The picnic for the greyhounds is the opposite of the basset bashes that take place about this time.

Bassets are the clowns of dogdom with flapping ears, lolling tongues, Einstein eyes and low-slung tummies that brush the ground. (How'd those bassets get in here? Bid them begone!)

Greyhounds are aristocrats, tall, long, lean in shades of gray, black, brown and white. If they were human, they would carry gloves.

If any one or two of them should become fractious Sunday, the others will turn, glance at them, then look away as if dismissing such unruly behavior.

Their dignity is innate, inbred. It comes with the breed.

You would think they had completed finishing school, but hundreds of them have been subject to the coarsest treatment.

During their racing career, many are pent up - crated with only space to lie down, get up, turn around, and lie down again.

(And that explains why, amid the titles to be awarded Sunday, is one for the dog with the barest butt.)

Dog racing is the most inhumane of sports. It is the only one in which the participants, after they lose a step or two on the track, are put to death.

When their course is done, so are many done away with.

But many are saved under the National Greyhound Adoption Program.

What they crave, without having in many cases any way of knowing the sentiment even exists, is love.

When a greyhound is embraced by a loving family, it becomes the most gentle and affectionate of beings.

As you will see if you attend the doings that will take place from noon to 4 p.m. at Woodstock.

There'll be games and contests as well to select the dog with the waggiest tail, the prettiest eyes, the greatest kisses. A booth will offer paraphernalia for sale, the proceeds of which will go to support the greyhound adoption program. Until you see a happy greyhound run - or skim - the ground, you haven't seen joy on the wing.

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