TWO pensioners were taken to hospital and one of their pets was mauled to death when an escaped dog went on the rampage, a court heard.

Lee Boville was meant to be looking after Staffordshire bull terrier Tyson when it ran off from his cousin's flat in Guisborogh, east Cleveland.

It first went for a woman walking her Patterdale terrier in Priory Close, grabbing the dog by the head and knocking over its shocked owner.

After a brave passer-by had wrestled it off the smaller terrier, it attacked another woman and her papillon in the town's Westgate nearby.

She was bitten on the arm while her pet - which she had from a puppy and described as "a huge part of my life" - was savaged to death.

Boville finally caught up with the run-away after the second attack, and apologised to the traumatised victim before she was taken to hospital.

The woman had stitches put into her arm, and the first walker was treated for concussion after banging her head when she fell.

Witnesses described the bull terrier as circling the first pet owner before knocking her over and grabbing her dog by the head.

Ian West, mitigating, said Boville, 40, had known his cousin's dog for nine years and had never known it escape or bite anyone.

Mr West told Teesside Crown Court: "He had no reason to think it would do anything like it did on this particular morning.

"He is absolutely mortified at what happened. He has never seen it behave aggressively and can't understand why it did on this occasion.

"He had looked after it many times, both with his cousin and without his cousin. He didn't know it had a propensity."

Boville, of Windmill Terrace, Stockton, was given an 18-month community order with 120 hours of unpaid work for the community.

Judge Simon Bourne-Arton, QC, told him: "I have to take into account not just the physical impact but also the psychological impact."

Unemployed Boville admitted two charges of being in control of a dangerously out-of-control dog on July 27 last year.