Sharing a greyhound
Syndicates and shares, explained properly
Most people in this sport own a piece of a dog rather than the whole of one. Here is what a share actually buys you, how the bill is divided, who decides what, and what happens when somebody wants out.
The basics
What a share actually buys
A share is a slice of the dog. Not a slice of a company, not a ticket, not a membership. If you hold a quarter, you own a quarter of the greyhound, you pay a quarter of its bill, you receive a quarter of anything it wins, and you get the same race night as everybody else, because the dog cannot run a quarter of a race.
The governing body draws a line at four. Up to four people sharing a dog is a partnership, and each of them is registered as an owner in their own name. More than four is a syndicate, and a syndicate nominates one person as its head, who registers with the GBGB and deals with the paperwork on the group's behalf. The registration fee is £73 the first time and £36 a year after that, for each person who registers.
Either way, the trainer's fee is the trainer's fee. Sharing does not make the dog cheaper to keep. It makes your part of it smaller.
The arithmetic
How the bill is split
Here is a typical month at Ivanhoe Kennels, with real fees, divided between a few people. Nothing is rounded to flatter it.
A month with four races in it
- Kennelling, 30 days at £12 a day (£10 before VAT)
- £360 inc VAT
- Four races at £60 each (£50 before VAT)
- £240 inc VAT
- The month, before any prize money
- £600 inc VAT
- Four sharing
- £150 each
- Six sharing
- £100 each
- Ten sharing
- £60 each
Run money comes off before the bill is divided. At £30 to £50 a run, four races take £120 to £200 off that £600, and a win takes off more. A dog that runs three times rather than four costs £60 less. A dog that does not run at all, because it is resting or carrying a knock, costs the kennelling and nothing else, and earns nothing. That is racing.
The vet is separate and is split the same way. The one-off costs at the start — the dog itself, the registration, the £210 retirement payment — are divided when the dog is bought. Every figure on this page is explained in full on the costs page.
Decisions
Who decides what
The trainer decides what is best for the dog. When it trials, what grade it runs in, when it rests, whether it is sound enough to go to the track this week. That is what you are paying for, and a dog with six owners giving six opinions on its entries is a dog that is not being trained.
The owners decide the money. Whether to carry on, whether to sell, whether to spend on a treatment the vet has suggested rather than rest the dog, and when the dog's racing days should end. The trainer will give an honest opinion on all of it. The decision is yours.
What makes this work is one voice. A partnership of four can usually manage that between themselves. A syndicate needs its head to be the person who rings the kennel and the person the kennel rings back. Four people phoning about the same dog on the same evening does nobody any good, least of all the dog.
The part people skip
What happens if someone wants out
Somebody always does, eventually. They move, they lose interest, money gets tight, or the dog is not what they hoped. None of that is a problem if it was thought about at the start. All of it is a problem if it was not.
The usual answer is that the remaining owners get first refusal on the share, at a price you agreed in advance or by a method you agreed in advance. If nobody wants it, the leaver can sell it to somebody the others are happy with. What a leaver cannot do is stop paying and keep the share, because the dog still eats.
A share is only ever worth what somebody will pay for it, and a share in a dog that is not winning may be worth nothing at all. Go in knowing that. The sensible way to think of a share is as a hobby you have paid for in advance, not something you will get back.
What a sensible agreement says
Write it down. One side of paper is enough, and the GBGB's registration forms do not do this bit for you. It should name the people and the size of each share. It should say who speaks to the kennel. It should say how the bill is paid and by what date each month, and what happens if somebody misses it. It should say how prize money is divided and how often it is settled up.
Then the hard parts. How a share is sold, who gets first refusal, and how the price is set. What happens if a member dies. Who decides when the dog retires, where it goes, and who pays for the neutering and dental work the retirement scheme does not cover. And who the £210 comes back to, if it comes back at all.
We are not solicitors and this is not legal advice. It is the list of things we have seen go wrong when they were not agreed. If you are forming a group, bring your draft and we will tell you what is missing.