Dog beaten to death

Thugs hacked off a pet dog’s leg and cut its throat after beating it to death during a brutal onslaught, it emerged tonight.

The three-year-old boxer’s mutilated corpse was discovered in a field close to Carnlough, Co Antrim, on Monday night.

The USPCA animal welfare group warned that the heartless killers might strike again.

“There’s a lot of pet owners in that village who will be very worried about their own animals and we can’t give them any reassurance so people would need to come forward and start talking to us about who did this,” a spokesman said.

A post mortem found that the animal had been bludgeoned to death then had its front leg cut off while large areas of flesh were missing from around the throat.

The representative said the USPCA could think of no reason for the attack.