TWO greyhound trainers face being banned from the sport after being photographed taking dogs to be slaughtered by a builders’ merchant and buried in his back garden.

Sid Fenwick and his daughter Gillian Young were caught on camera by The Sunday Times taking two greyhounds to be destroyed by David Smith. He is said to have killed 10,000 dogs and buried them in a plot of land at the back of his house in Seaham, Co Durham.

The two trainers have been suspended by the National Greyhound Racing Club (NGRC), the sport’s governing body. Young’s husband, Graeme, has also been suspended from his job as an assistant racing manager at Pelaw Grange, a licensed dogtrack at Chester-le-Street in Co Durham.

Both Fenwick and Young now face formal stewards’ inquiries by the NGRC. The body has the power to fine them up to £5,000 each and to impose a lifetime ban from attending racetracks. NGRC rules stipulate that only vets can put down greyhounds.

The NGRC’s action comes a week after The Sunday Times exposed for the first time how healthy greyhounds were being slaughtered simply because they were no longer considered fit enough to race.

The killing of the greyhounds, some of which were aged only four or five and could have lived another 10 years, had long been suspected but never before proved. Alistair McLean, the NGRC’s chief executive, admitted he was “flabbergasted and appalled”.

Each year trainers retire around 10,000 licensed greyhounds from racing, but homes are only found for about a third of them. The remainder simply “disappear”, according to animal welfare groups.

Yesterday campaigners mounted dozens of protests outside tracks and betting shops throughout the country. In parliament last week, politicians raised concerns that the government’s forthcoming animal welfare act will not regulate the dog racing industry quickly enough.

The government is delaying until at least 2009 proposals that would make it illegal for a greyhound to be put down by anyone other than a vet using an intravenous injection.

The dogs buried in Smith’s so-called “canine killing field” were slaughtered by shooting them in their heads with a bolt gun, which is not at present illegal. The carcasses were then tipped into a hole in his plot before he used a mechanical digger to cover the “graves” with soil.

Smith told an undercover reporter that it took him three years to fill his one-acre plot with bodies, at which point he started over again. It was also said Smith had been providing a £10-a-time dog-killing service for sections of the greyhound industry for up to 15 years.

The scandal has caused widespread alarm within both the racing industry and also among the general public, as well as sparking inquiries by the government, the RSPCA and the tax authorities.

The Environment Agency, which has voiced concerns over the possible health implications of so many bodies buried in such a small space, is attempting to gain access to Smith’s land in order to excavate the plot.

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