SIX American bulldogs that savaged a pensioner and his dog are a step closer to being destroyed after their breeder failed in a legal bid to save them.

The animals were placed on canine “death row” after they attacked retired teacher Lindsay Edwards and his Staffordshire bull terrier Zumo on The Scrambles, near Pittington, County Durham, last October.

Mr Edwards suffered bite wounds to his head, legs and arms that took three months to heal and Zumo needed lengthy vet’s treatment.

The bulldogs’ owner, Stephen Potts, was jailed for three months and banned for life from keeping dogs at Durham Crown Court in August; and Judge Christopher Prince also ordered that the six dogs be put down.

Potts, previously of Coronation Crescent, Low Pittington, subsequently appealed against his lifetime ban and the dogs’ destruction but the Court of Appeal has now rejected his case – leaving the bulldogs facing death.

Potts, who was himself attacked by two of his other dogs resulting in him losing an arm a month before the Scrambles incident, now has 14 days to decide whether to further challenge the outcome – but would have to do so at his own cost, and the court was previously told he was of “limited means”.

The cost to the taxpayer of keeping all 14 of Potts’ bulldogs in kennels, after they were impounded by the police, had reached £38,000 by August, the court heard.

Potts, who turned to keeping dogs for comfort after his son killed himself some years ago, admitted six charges of being in charge of dogs that were dangerously out of control on the second day of his trial on slightly more serious charges at Durham Crown Court in June.

The two dogs that cost him his arm have already been destroyed.

Potts did not appeal against his jail sentence, which will by now have expired.

Judge Prince said the sentences were intended to act as a deterrent to any other dog owners who fail to keep their dogs under proper control.

Potts had been exercising the bulldogs off their leads in a farmer’s field, with the farmer’s permission. But they attacked Mr Edwards, of Belmont, and his dogs on a nearby public walkway.