“This is like a great birthday party,” said Richard Ahrens, a race-goer and dog-owner, “but you know it will be your last one ever.” As the greyhounds raced around Walthamstow Stadium, in northeast London, for the final time on Saturday night, excitement and sadness went neck-and-neck in the packed stands.

Long before the gates opened, hundreds of punters had queued outside the Art Deco frontage of the stadium, known as the Stow. Those gates were soon closed again, the Stow full to its 7,000 capacity.

After the final race several hundred fans ran on to the track, taking snapshots and souvenirs. Somebody doing a Kenneth Wolstenholme impression said: “Some people are on the track, they think it's all over. It is now ....”

One of those “pig sick” about the closure was Barrie Clegg, chairman of the local greyhound owners' association. When he met his wife, Debbie, 24 years ago his chat-up line was to ask how close she lived to the dog track. These days they work hard to rehome retired greyhounds, and have been at the fore of SOS, Save Our Stow campaign. Mick Puzey, a trainer, said that the stress had kept him awake at nights and given him “terrible nosebleeds”. He at least got see to his dog, Perceptive Pacey, win the penultimate race.

Gail May, now head of maths at a high school and owner of Spiridon Louis, the 2007 greyhound of the year, said that she fell in love with numbers after her father taught her how to calculate odds on the Stow tote board. Joe O'Gorman, a bookmaker, had been expecting the sell-off, but still “it is an emotional day”. His grandfather had stood at the Stow, as did his father, who died in April. He said that he was switching to the track at Harlow, although that felt like “being relegated from the Premier League”.

The Stow was built in 1933 by William Chandler, a street-corner bookmaker, and had been owned by his family until its sale this year to property developers and a housing association for an undisclosed sum. The decision caused a lot of bad feeling, but the Chandlers point to losses of more than £500,000 for the year ended February 2008. Charles Chandler, the company chairman, said that he was deeply upset, but the business had become unsustainable.

That has done little to mollify those who see the Stow as a public institution. Before the racing began on Saturday, the SOS campaign marched on Walthamstow Town Hall, supported by Neil Gerrard, the local Labour MP and former greyhound-owner, and Ian Duncan Smith, the Conservative MP for nearby Chingford. The campaign hopes to persuade the new owners to sell or lease the track back to a consortium fronted by the trainer Ricky Holloway, but so far this has been ruled out.

The closure of Walthamstow leaves Britain with 29 registered greyhound tracks, and London with only one - Wimbledon. At the sport's postwar peak, 50 million a year packed into 77 tracks. But the shift to betting in shops and online has hit tracks hard. Despite £2.3 billion a year gambled on greyhounds, turnover at the Walthamstow tote fell from £16.85 million in 1989 to £8.76 million last year.

Before the sale was announced three months ago, attendance at the Stow had slumped to a couple of thousand on Saturday and a couple of hundred on a wet Tuesday. Yet in the run-up to its closure, the crowds streamed in, which suggests that there is still life in the old dogs. There were all sorts at the Stow on Saturday night, from dog men to cool cats, and the speakers complained of illegally parked Lamborghinis and Mercedes. The only cloth cap in evidence was worn by the musician Jools Holland.

The bookies joshed that they would pay winning punters “next Tuesday”. “Is grief too strong a word?”, somebody asked. Driving past the stadium after midnight, and seeing the neon lights already turned off, a mini-cab driver said: “If Gordon Brown can find billions to save the bankers at Northern Rock, why can't he save our dogs at the Stow?”.

Looking for a new life

The closure is expected to leave more than 150 greyhounds in need of new homes. If you fancy giving a home to one:

— You don't have to take them on long runs - two 20-minute walks a day are enough for dogs that are generally “happy to be retired”

— They don't cost much to feed - a £7 bag of biscuit-based feed should last a month

— They are not “yappy”and are good with children. Just keep the dog muzzled for a week if you have a cat, by which time “the cat should have the upper hand”

— They are used to travelling and being kennelled

— Every greyhound is neutered or spayed and fitted with a “tracking” microchip before being rehomed

Source: Debbie Clegg, Walthamstow Owners and Welfare Association

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