Chasing Rabbits

 Humor

• Author: John Bogle, founder of the Vanguard Mutual Fund Group and President of its Bogle Financial Markets Research.
• Updated: 04/13/2009
• Copyright: John C.  Bogle
  John Wiley & Sons, Inc

A story about the futility of chasing after something that is not real.

The Reverend Fred Craddock, a remarkable preacher from Georgia, may have been imagining things¬ the way preachers are wont to do-but he says this story really happened. Dr. Craddock was visiting in the home of his niece. There was this old greyhound, just like the ones who race around a track chasing those mechanical rabbits. His niece had taken the dog in to prevent it from being destroyed because its racing days were over, and Dr. Craddock struck up a conversation with the greyhound:
I said to the dog, "Are you still racing?" "No," he replied.

"Well, what was the matter? Did you get too old to race?"

"No, I still had some race in me."

"Well, what then? Did you not win?"

"I won over a million dollars for my owner. "

"Well, what was it? Bad treatment?"

"Oh, no," the dog said. "They treated us royally when we were racing. "

"Did you get crippled?" "No. "

"Then why?" I pressed. "Why?"

The dog answered, "I quit."

"You quit?"

"Yes," he said. "I quit. "Why did you quit?"

"I just quit because after all that running and running and running, I found out that the rabbit I was chasing wasn't even real."


From Enough, John C.  Bogle, John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 2009, p. 111-112.