With Facebook awash with demands for sever penalties for the idiot who set fire to the Manchester Dogs Home, The Times ran a story recently highlighting just how far we have to go before animal abusers get anywhere near the right penalties in the UK.
Are a couple of names below to add to your ‘deserve a good kicking’ if you ever run into them list.
A couple hanged their pet collie because they did not want to go to the expense of having it put down by a vet, a court has heard.
Veronica Reid, 42, and her boyfriend, Jon Allen, claimed that Shandy had become aggressive and had to be kept in a cage.
The ten-year-old collie was left by a former boyfriend of Reid, but neither she nor Allen wanted to keep him. Salisbury magistrates’ court heard that the couple, from Trowbridge, Wiltshire, inquired about having the dog humanely destroyed but seemed “concerned” at the cost.
Allen and a friend, Paul Brown, 52, instead strung him up with a rope slung over a roof beam. They left the animal hanging by his neck for ten minutes, then Brown punching it about the head to “ensure it was dead”. Shandy was then buried in the back garden.
An RSPCA inspector said that the dog had scratched the walls as it struggled to free itself after being strung up.