A prominent trainer who came out in opposition of an imminent ban on greyhound racing has defended his wife, after it was revealed she had twice been disqualified from the sport for breaching anti-doping regulations.
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Jodie Lord, wife of veteran breeder and trainer Andy Lord, is currently serving an 18-week disqualification after one of her dogs was found to have oxazepam in its system.
The anti-anxiety drug is considered a category 5 prohibited substance under the Greyhound Racing New South Wales guidelines.
Greyhound Racing NSW records show Mrs Lord, who is also an experienced trainer, was also barred from competing in the sport for four months in 2009 after one of her greyhounds was found to have the steroid dexamethasone in its system.
Mrs Lord was also fined in 2015, when one of her dogs was found with methylpredisolone in its system.
But Mr Lord said the breaches were all low-level positives, with one of the breaches occurring after therapeutic drugs were administered by a vet.
A steward determined the source of the oxazepam breach was not the couple as neither held a prescription for the drug, and may have come from elsewhere, Mr Lord said.
He said their dogs were swabbed at least 800 times a year and the levels found in the dogs were comparable to a "grain of sand in the ocean".
He said there was a clear distinction between drug doping and drug presentations in greyhound racing.
"To be considered doping you need 5000 nanograms [of a drug]. It's classed as a presentation, even if it's only one nanogram. This is why we need to bring levels into racing," he said.
Greyhound trainers across NSW and the ACT, including Mr Lord, have united to fight the ban on racing from next year.
The decision to ban the industry was made after an 800-page report into the industry that revealed between 48,891 and 68,448 dogs had been killed because they were considered too slow to pay their way or were unsuitable for racing.
Mr Lord, who owns more than 250 dogs and lives on a property at Gunning, told Fairfax Media only a small percentage of people in the industry engaged in animal cruelty and he'd "never done anything wrong".
He stands to lose everything should the controversial ban go ahead.
"I'm 52, I don't know anything else, I've never done anything else. How would I support my family?" he previously said.
"I've got about $4 million worth of stock sitting here and the government's saying it would give us $500 a dog."
Mrs Lord is also one of more than 150 trainers accused by Greyhound Racing NSW of exporting greyhounds to Macau.
However, Mr Lord said the dogs in question were sold to a third party, who was a registered trainer with Greyhound Racing NSW.
Mr Lord said he did not know what happened to the dogs after they were sold.
