A man whose out-of-control terrier and Rottweiler savaged a family pet to death and bit two members of the public has been banned from keeping dogs for a year.
One of Andrew Hindes’s animals will also be put down after a sheriff heard they launched three separate violent attacks while off their leads.
His Staffordshire bull terrier Roxy killed a tiny Pekingese – also named Roxy – while she was being walked by her owner in Aberdeen’s Nellfield Place.
And his Rottweiler Gally bit Susan Noble on the bottom and Garreth Dunnett on the body.
Both were walking to allotments beside Nellfield Place near the city centre when they were attacked in separate incidents.
The two victims suffered puncture wounds and although neither was seriously injured Mr Dunnett had to be prescribed antibiotics.
Sheriff Noel McPartlin ordered that Gally be destroyed by a vet within the next fortnight.
But Hindes’s Staffie Roxy was spared a similar fate after his agent, solicitor Mike Monro, pointed out that the maximum penalty which could be imposed on someone when their dog destroys another one is a £500 fine.
Aberdeen Sheriff Court heard the bull terrier had been allowed to run loose when it approached Richard Lyon and his daughter Ruby while they were walking their two dogs.
Fiscal depute Stephanie Ross said that without warning, Roxy ran up to the Pekingese and grabbed her in his mouth before shaking her violently until she stopped moving.
The court heard Mr Lyon tried to kick the dog away from his pet, but it would not loosen its grip.
And while Ruby cried hysterically, 27-year-old Hindes appeared from his house and prised open his dog’s mouth.
Miss Ross said Roxy was left motionless lying on the pavement with blood coming from her wounds.
After taking the dog to the vet Mr Lyon was given the devastating news that his pet had a punctured spine. She died about an hour later.
Mr Monro told the sheriff that “despite the disgust of the public” the maximum sentence which could be imposed when a dog destroyed another one was a fine of £500.
As a result, the court was not entitled to order that Roxy be put down.
Mr Monro said that Hindes had been desperate to keep his pets, who had always been good natured towards him, and as a result ordered that an animal behaviourist carry out an assessment on Gally to try to prove he was not a danger to the public.
However, the specialist’s report said that although the Rottweiler was calm around people who knew him he displayed aggression towards those who made him feel threatened.
He said as a result he could not say the dog was not a danger to the public and therefore asked for it to be destroyed.
Mr Monro asked that the court not order his client to pay for the destruction himself saying it would be “heartless, draconian and extreme”.
He said that the dogs had never been out of Hindes’s reach and were not “running amuck across the city”.
Mr Monro said that he had also given up custody of the dogs in July this year.
Sentencing Hindes, of 21b Nellfield Place, Sheriff Noel McPartlin said: “It does seem that I will have to make an order for destruction of Gally. I think you will appreciate this is a serious situation.
“The very fact that you handed over your dogs to someone else shows that you realise that, and I do recognise that you were around the dogs at the time and they were not on their own when the various incidents happened.
“But they are not acceptable events, we can’t really be having that, and for that reason they are serious.”
The sheriff ordered that Gally be destroyed by a vet within the next fortnight and ordered Hindes to carry out 150 hours of unpaid work within the next six months.
He also disqualified him from owning a dog for the next year.
Hindes refused to comment at his home last night.