Maddog McDermutt, the world’s greatest retired-to- the- pen Greyhound trainer, just ask him, first appeared on the pages of The Greyhound Review in 1978 in a story called Ol' Pink Eye and the Forever Flight.
It wasn't long before Maddog was offering all kinds of advice, on something of a regular basis, to the readers of The Greyhound Review. Maddog claimed, in his own way, as only Maddog can, that he was not the Daymon Runyon of Dog Racing. Daymon Runyon was the Maddog McDermutt of Horse Racing. Maddog has appeared, directly or indirectly, in over 200 published stories and articles. Maddog’s column “The Far Turn/In Search of the Big Picture” has taken Little Elsie and Maddog to most United States tracks, and to tracks and dog adventures in England, Wales, Scotland, New Zealand, Australia, Mexico and Canada. Not only are Maddog and sidekick Little Elsie household words within the Greyhound industry, they also have toured extensively on behalf of the Greyhound adoption movement. Maddog and Little Elsie and their adopted Greyhound Jones are lifetime honorary members of Greyhound Pets of America.
Here are eight of the best of the old, crazy adventures, vintage Maddog McDermutt, back when Greyhound racing was going strong, along with Maddog cronies Fleas Finnigan, Little Elsie, Mangy Martinez, Hugh Mungas, Ben Dover, Pooch the Mooch McGill, Jake (The Rake) Smith, Cornelius T. Cratervoid … all the old gang.
Robert Scott McKinnon is the author of Moose, Bruce and the Goose (Bobbs Merrill), To Yellowstone: A Journey Home (Holt, Rinehart and Winston), Jesse’s Hound, (The Greyhound Review), Down Under Jones (Iowa Greyhound Association), and The Haunted Aquarium Castle (Freshwater and Marine Aquarium), The Captain’s Dog, Parts 1, 2, and 3, The Tooth Fairy Came to Gopher Gulch.
The Tooth Fairy Came to Gopher Gulch, a children’s play, was world-premiered by the University of Great Falls to 3,000 elementary children. It has also been produced as a recital and as a musical comedy. McKinnon has made a Johnson Motors, Alcoa Aluminum sponsored movie The River Busters, the first to go up the Salmon River, "The River of No Return," and has traveled across the United States by boat and raft. He taught high school English for 32 years; coached high school, junior high school and age group swimming. He and his wife Suzy continue to run a learn-to-swim program in summers and compete in masters swim meets in winter. The McKinnons raised and raced Greyhounds for fifteen years, beginning with an adoption, to leasing Greyhounds coast to coast, eventually running racing kennels in Florida and South Dakota, and back to adoptions. It has been said if you want to make a million dollars in dog racing, start with two million.