About Us
Awesome Lodge is a boutique Greyhound Training and Stud Dog facility located in Pearcedale Victoria. Owned and operated by the Thompson Family.
ABOUT US
Awesome Lodge
As a 14 year old getting his first dog to train, Jason Thompson could never have imagined where his hobby and passion would take him. Jason’s next-door neighbour had a greyhound that he took a liking to. His family were not involved in the industry (other than his dad liking a bet). Jason spent his teenage years growing up in Traralgon. His parents were insistent he stay at school till he completed Year 12. All Jason wanted to do was spend time with his dog. He got to know Marg Long who was the Manager at the Traralgon Club. After finishing school Jason began working with greyhounds on a full-time basis, gaining his trainers license and learning as much as he could from as many people as possible. At just 25 years of age, Jason won the coveted Melbourne Cup with Light Of Fire. The following year, after knowing each other for about 8 years, Jason & Seona became a team. Both young and starting from scratch they began building their dream. In December 1996 they welcomed their first son, Ben. 3 days later their budding champion Awesome Assassin won the Silver Chief, worth $30000 to the winner at the time. $15000 meant Jason & Seona could put a deposit on their first house. Fast forward to 2003, son Luke had joined the family in 2001, and daughter Holly was on the way. Jason & Seona poured everything they had into purchasing a 5-acre property at Pearcedale. With a young family to take care of Jason knew it was time to start planning for a dream to become reality. Awesome Assassin (Timmy) had become a successful stud dog and was the king of the family, it wasn’t a hard decision to come up with a name for their greyhound business, it needed to be named after Timmy, Awesome Lodge seemed very fitting. Over the past 20 years and quite a few updates along the way, Awesome Lodge has become home to many champion greyhounds. The Thompsons started off with race dogs, stud dogs, pups & broodbitches. After the workload was becoming impossible, they made the decision to solely concentrate on Racing. With a tremendous amount of support from owners of quality greyhounds they have been fortunate to train some of the countries most elite athletes. In 2018 the opportunity arose to head down the stud dogs’ path again, this quickly became Seona’s domain. A happy balance with the right number of race dogs and a few stud dogs in the kennel, Team Thompson are nowadays living their dream.
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Awasome Assassion 1994-2007
Jason Thompson
Jason always had a vision and could see the big picture, and clearly, he was right. Hard work comes naturally for him, he rarely stops. Whether it’s training the dogs, going trialling, mowing lawns, cleaning gutters, vacuuming kennels (numerous times each day), working out each dog’s individual program (which he has in his head for every single dog and usually has 2-3 months in advance planned), taking care of his family and ensuring everyone has anything and everything they need. He likes to have a game of golf but rarely finds the time. His passion is racing and one of his proudest achievements is watching Ben (Seona & Jason’s eldest son), become a successful jockey. These days Jason enjoys getting everything prepared for racing and loading the dogs up then watching Luke and Holly take them to the track.
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Seona Thompson
If you ask Seona what she loves most in life she won’t need to think about it, her family are her whole world, and she is fiercely protective of them. Raising 4 kids whilst trying to build a business was far from easy and unlike Jason, Seona couldn’t see the big picture, instead she would just worry about the coming days ahead. After having a few jobs outside of greyhounds along the way and doing some volunteering at a local hospital, Seona now spends her days running the operational side of the business. Jason is the first to admit he isn’t tech savvy and leaves all that side of things to Seona.
Whether it be nominating dogs, booking trials, taking care of the companies’ accounts, preparing weekly schedules (so everyone knows where they need to be) and looking after the household, as well as being in the kennels for late night let outs and any other time she is needed. Seona also has taken on the Stud side of the business, with Holly’s assistance. She loves spending as much time as possible with her husband, children & grandchildren and spoiling them all.
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Luke Thompson
Working with greyhounds on a full-time basis wasn’t ever something Luke really considered. After completing year 12 in 2019 and obtaining fantastic results in Accounting, Luke thought he might like to go to Uni to head down that path. He wasn’t 100% sure though so his parents suggested he take a year off and work in the family business to give him time to be sure. It didn’t take Luke long to realise that taking the families dogs racing and trialling was something he was very passionate about.
Outside of his day/night job with the dogs Luke loves golf. In a short time, he has had quite a bit of success, travelling overseas to represent Australia as part of a Mercedes Benz Golf Tour. He has also won the Junior Club Champion award as his local golf club. Luke combines his 2 greatest loves at times, taking his clubs along when he takes the dogs racing, getting in a round between kennelling and racing.
Holly & Michael Thompson
Unlike Luke, Holly always wanted to work with greyhounds. She obtained her catchers, handlers and trainers licenses as soon as she hit the relevant ages. After leaving school Holly worked in a vet clinic and began studying Vet Nursing. She worked at The Lost Dogs home for a short period of time and then joined her parents & Luke working fulltime at Awesome Lodge.
Holly enjoys going racing and has her favourites who are just that little bit more spoilt than all the others. She is forever sitting in kennels giving dogs cuddles. She has had a great deal of success at the track in a short time handing Group Winners. Holly’s greatest achievement though is her son Michael.
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​Sophie Thompson
The youngest member of the Awesome Lodge Team. Sophie has been spending time in the kennels since she arrived home from hospital at 5 days of age. She attended her first Greyhound of The Year function when she was 8 days old. Sophie helps in the kennels after school every day, she has her favourite dogs that she likes to feed and put out in yards. Sophie loves going trialling on weekends with her Dad.
Sophie can’t wait to be old enough to obtain her catchers licence and then further down the track be able to handle greyhounds in races just like her older brothers and sister.
Ben, Stephanie & Harry Thompson
Ben was around the dogs from birth. Seona worked full time; Jason was in charge of taking care of Ben. From attending trials, race meetings, vet visits, you name it, Ben was by Jason’s side.
Ben handled the winner of the 2012 Melbourne Cup, Got A Moment, along with numerous other winners for the team.
Throwing to his Mums side of the family size wise, Ben fell into the opportunity to work part time in a thoroughbred stable. Ben was only 15 years of age at the time, attending secondary school, playing sport and helping with the dogs, nothing else really crossed his mind. That changed very quickly when he was asked if he would like to be a jockey, without giving it any thought Ben said yes.
He was accepted into the Racing Victoria Apprentice program and within 12 months was having his first race ride. There were plenty of tears from proud family members when Ben rode a winner at his 2nd race ride.
In 2017 Ben began dating fellow jockey Stephanie Thornton, they both knew from very early on that they were destined to be together. They were thrown a few challenges along the way, Ben moving to Singapore for a year after gaining a license to ride there. Steph moving to Queensland to further her career. Covid hitting and again being kept apart until Ben decided to follow Steph and head to Queensland. They married in 2022 and welcomed their first son, Harry in 2023. Just when things seemed to be settled for the family, out of the blue Ben was offered a riding contract in Hong Kong, within 2 weeks they packed up and moved the family to follow Ben’s dream.
Ben & Steph follow the family’s team of dogs (Ben often gets kennel names wrong but Steph is on top of who is who and who is racing where). They own shares in a few dogs and have 2 beautiful, retired girls living the life on their 5-acre Qld property.
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Sarah (Black Opium)
Having trained both her parents, we were very excited to have Sarah join our kennel in 2018. It was love at first site for Seona. She formed a very close bond with this special girl and knew from early days that Sarah would call Awesome Lodge home her whole life.
Sarah had a brilliant race career, 61 starts for 29 wins. 13 seconds, 1 third
Her career began on the 28/9/2018. She won her first 7 races in a row.
Feature Races Achievements:
2nd 2018 Melbourne Cup Final – Sandown Park
2nd 2019 Australian Cup Final - The Meadows
2nd 2019 Brisbane Cup Final – Albion Park
1st 2019 Victorian Sprint Championship Final – The Meadows
1st 2020 Sapphire Crown – Sandown Park
1st 2020 Brisbane Cup Final – Albion Park
