9:49am Saturday 6th February 2010
By Chris Fay
A MAN who held his dog like a carrier bag and hit it against a lamppost three times has received a lifetime ban from keeping animals.
Gareth David Gaffney appeared at Newton Aycliffe Magistrates’ Court yesterday for sentencing on four charges of causing suffering and cruelty.
Gaffney was seen by a motorist with a terrier-type dog, called Gypsy, in Crook, County Durham, on December 21, 2008.
She told a court during the trial of October 2, last year, she heard the dog yelping as Gaffney held it and punched it in the face. The woman, who knew Gaffney, formerly of Buttermere Grove, Crook, drove back and witnessed him hit the dog off a lamppost, holding it like a carrier bag.
Yesterday, Kevin Campbell, prosecuting said a second dog was found “cowering under the stairs in a small cupboard”
in Gaffney’s home.
Magistrates found him guilty in his absence of two counts of inflicting blunt trauma and one of failing to meet an animal’s needs.
During the same trial he was found guilty of criminal damage having kicked his former partner’s meter box when she threw him out, again on December 12, 2008.
Gaffney yesterday admitted causing unnecessary cruelty to a third dog, a greyhound called Red, between March 10 and 24, 2009.
Mr Campbell said the greyhound had lost a third of its body weight and had scabs, alopecia and pressure sores on its hips, but was brought back to good health in a couple of weeks with “proper feeding and some TLC”.
Gaffney told probation officers he had only had it two weeks and said he took it in because he was concerned it was underweight.
He admitted causing unnecessary suffering and said in hindsight he should have taken the dog to a vet.
Andrew Clinton, mitigating, said Gaffney had been on remand for three weeks which was the equivalent of a six-week jail sentence.
The 23-year-old of Plantation View, Howden-le-Wear, County Durham, was given 150 hours unpaid work and a 12-month community order as well as the ban.
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