Greyhound racing, long a fixture in New England, is finally on its last legs.

After years of waning interest and rising opposition from animal rights activists, live dog racing quietly rolled over in the Granite State last month and is set to disappear on Jan. 1 in Massachusetts as well.

In Rhode Island, the bankrupt owners of the Twin River racino have also announced plans to shut their unprofitable dog track, but may end up granting a temporary reprieve.

Connecticut’s dog tracks became history earlier in the decade.

Still, while greyhound racing is fast becoming a thing of the past across New England, the tracks themselves are likely to become hot commodities amid a scramble for real estate by major casino companies during a regional gambling expansion.

As lawmakers in Massachusetts and New Hampshire take another look at slot machine gambling, former track sites are high on the list of potential locations.

Won’t Go Down Barking

Still, while it looks like curtains, be prepared for a surprise or two during this final chapter of this gritty, no-frills sport.

Even as it faces sure extinction, the dog racing industry appears destined to go down barking, with last ditch legal and legislative challenges mounted in both Massachusetts and Rhode Island.

“With the industry in an inexorable downturn; with purses not keeping pace with expenses … with fellow members being forced out of business every day, we have to ask ourselves: Just where do we go from here?” asks Gary Guccione, the secretary treasurer of the National Greyhound Association, in a despairing letter to industry members bemoaning the sport’s inexorable decline.

New England dog tracks have been hard hit by the decline, with the crowd at Revere’s Wonderland, once numbering in the thousands, now down to a die-hard, ancient few.

But the real nail in the coffin has been the rise of animal rights activists determined to ban the sport for alleged cruelty.

Operating out of a low-rent basement office in Somerville, a rag-tag group of activists under the banner of Grey2K has waged an increasingly successful campaign to ban the sport across the country.

The group came within a percentage point or two of succeeding in passing a Massachusetts referendum in 2000, despite millions spent by track owners on an ad blitz.

Backed by major animal welfare groups and a grassroots network of volunteers, Grey2K and its allies won handily the second time around in 2008.

The group, led by husband-wife team of Carey Theil and Christine Dorchak, was also instrumental in a deal that has seen New Hampshire’s dog track put an end to live racing.

In return, the tracks will be allowed to simulcast, or broadcast in, feeds from other dog races around the country for patrons to bet on.

Rhode Island is proving a tougher nut to crack, even though the high-powered investor group behind Twin River – its main interest clearly in the thousands of video slots at the racino – has fought to shut the money-losing track.

All this is likely to be bad news for hundreds of racetrack workers across the region, as they face losing hard-to-get blue collar jobs in the teeth of the worst recession in decades.

Playing The Sympathy Card

But it’s less tragic for track owners, who control valuable real estate amid plans for a major expansion of gambling, almost definitely in Massachusetts and quite possibly in New Hampshire as well.

In fact, the job loss that is pending with the demise of dog racing may provide a valuable sympathy card for track owners to play with state lawmakers, as they decide how many gambling licenses to dole out and who to give them too. (Not that track owners don’t genuinely feel the pain, with Raynham-Taunton owner George Carney having started off as a track worker himself back in the Great Depression.)

After years of struggling to keep Revere’s Wonderland afloat, track owner and Boston restaurateur Charles Sarkis now faces the happy prospect of seeing his tumbleweed track redeveloped into a larger, gambling and entertainment complex.

Richard Fields, the Big Apple casino developer who became the lead investor in nearby Suffolk Downs a few years ago, last year pulled off a masterful merger between his track and Wonderland.

That gives Fields more development options – and two properties, Suffolk in East Boston and Wonderland in neighboring Revere – to play with as he pursues plans for a major entertainment and gambling venue.

Carney, owner of Raynham-Taunton dog track, is also sitting on a prime piece of gambling property that is looking more valuable every day.

A proposal to build an Indian casino in nearby Middleborough appears to be fading fast. Meanwhile, new House Speaker Robert DeLeo has made clear that any gambling expansion in the Bay State will have to include slot machines at the racetracks – a formula that must be music to Carney’s ears.

The tough, old businessman and track operator is reportedly having discussions with a number of gambling operators interested in building a casino-style complex on his property.

New Hampshire’s two remaining racetracks are also likely targets for gambling operators should the state legalize slot machines. That possibility is edging ever closer to reality, with the state’s governor recently forming a blue ribbon commission to look more closely at the gambling issue.

Still, the region’s dog racing industry is nothing but scrappy, and who would expect it to go down without a fight?

A group called The Protection of Working Animals and Handlers has gone to court in a bid to overturn last fall’s referendum banning greyhound racing come Jan. 1.

The group contends Grey2K and its supporters misled the public, but the effort is not winning over Attorney General Martha Coakley, who has weighed in against it.

Down in Rhode Island, the dog racing industry appears to be making a more skillful last stand.

With Twin River in bankruptcy and buried under $500 million in debt, the racino’s owners have tried to shut down its dog track, which they contend wracks up losses of $10 million each year.

Rhode Island lawmakers were having none of it, and actually voted not only to stop the track from closing, but to double the number of racing days!

Faced with such resistance, Twin Rivers’ owners are now trying a different tack, saying they will sign a new contract with racetrack workers, just for a lot less money.

Hmmm, we’ll see about that.

But the trends appear pretty clear: Goodbye dog racing, hello casinos.