The longest and most important part of a greyhound’s education is the early socialisation that begins at 3 weeks of age and develops the dog’s the fundamental skills for coping with education for racing, the track environment, and successful rehoming after its racing career is over.

The best time for a greyhound to develop fundamental skills is between 3 and 20 weeks of age.  This is the period of its life when it is least fearful and has an in-built desire to explore, but learning is a lifelong process. More information on Socialisation can be found here.

The more a young greyhound can learn about its environment, what things to seek out, ignore and avoid, and what behaviours are acceptable or not, the more likely it will be able to cope with different situations. The greyhound will be more likely to concentrate on chasing a lure, rather than being distracted or nervous in the race day environment.

The next part and shorter part of greyhound education is track education (‘breaking-in’)  the process of teaching a greyhound the skills required to become a successful race dog. This includes teaching the dog to chase the lure, how to be loaded into starting boxes, and how to make a clean start. How the greyhound is educated can influence its entire racing career.

Track education usually happens when the greyhound reaches 12-13 months of age, although it may be anywhere from 12-15 months of age. Sometimes a young greyhound may be very immature at 12 months and might need longer to mature before beginning track education.

Most professional track educators will have the greyhound for 4 to 6 weeks, during which the dog goes through an intense program of training. Trainers who conduct track education themselves may choose to spread the lessons out over a longer period, taking more time to develop the dog’s skills.

Greyhounds have been bred for hundreds of years for their chasing ability. This instinct is inherited, and only needs encouraging – you do not have to teach a greyhound to chase moving objects, you just have to encourage it.

From 5-6 weeks of age onwards, use a toy, squeaker, squealer or another type of artificial lure to encourage pups to chase and play. These can be wiggled by hand, dragged along the ground, or hung from a rotary clothesline or bullring and moved. This training opportunity is often lost as young pups are not played with enough, particularly if they are simply moved from the breeder’s property to a commercial rearing facility.

If you do choose to send pups to a rearing facility, it is still worth taking the time and effort to do regular training at a young age. Avoid rearing facilities that have so many pups that they only have time to feed and water the pups and clean the yards. Facilities that have staff that do some training or play with the pups each day are preferable, as socialisation and early encouragement will make training in later life stages much easier. Also, look for a rearing facility that allows you to regularly visit your pups to work on handling, teaching the pups to walk on a lead and play chase games.

Chase games can be used at any age and are the first step in teaching greyhounds to chase the lure. Play in small groups and with each pup individually. Playing in groups can encourage competition, but it is important that each pup gets to ‘win’ so that you are not just encouraging the bigger pups to play and teaching the smaller ones they don’t have a chance. For shy pups, one on one play is probably better to encourage confidence.

Once the pups are interested in chasing the toy lure, begin dragging it along the ground for them to chase. Teach them how to ‘hand-slip’ by having one person hold the pup and the other drag the toy lure whilst running away calling the pup. Once the pup is showing interest and is trying to break free from your hold, they can be released to chase the lure.

It is important that the greyhound views the boxes as a good thing, and as an indicator that they are about to have the opportunity to have a run after the lure. What you teach them at this point is really setting the greyhound up for its entire racing career.

If the greyhound  is not coping well with this step, or you are having trouble despite taking it in small steps, it may need some help from a professional educator. It is better to address the problem early, rather than let the greyhound  get into bad habits which can then be hard to break later.

After each run, the greyhound should be thoroughly checked all over for signs of soreness or injury. Pups are often awkward at this age, and their bones have not finished developing, so it is a common time for injuries to occur. By checking the greyhound after each run, you will quickly notice any soreness, and can respond accordingly. It may be the greyhound needs to be rested until it can recover, rather than running it whilst injured. This is where a private trainer has a definite advantage over a professional educator, as you are not committed to any time frame for the education process.

During education, the dogs are run on a regular basis with free-galloping at home or at a slipping track on the days in between. This is, of course, dependent on the dog pulling up well after a hard run. If it is at all sore, it may be appropriate to consult your veterinarian for advice as to whether the dog needs resting or confinement.

It is important to remember that these are immature greyhounds whose bodies are not yet adapted to running at high speeds around corners. It is important to make sure their developing bones are slowly conditioned for these increased forces by providing enough rest between big runs.