A drug addict who was given £20 to rehome a family’s pet dog – but instead bound its legs with its own lead, tied it to a stone, and threw it in the Forth and Clyde Canal – was jailed for six months yesterday.
Daniel McPhillips, of Denny, whose actions were labelled “repugnant” by a sheriff, was also banned from owning or keeping any kind of pet himself for five years.
Animal cruelty prevention charity the Scottish SPCA, which initially reported the case to the procurator fiscal, said McPhillips had caused his canine victim “unimaginable suffering”.
Falkirk Sheriff Court heard that McPhillips, 26, had been asked by desperate mother-of-two Tammy Burgoyne to take the seven-year-old dog, King Charles Spaniel Alfie, to his local vet and say that he’d found him – knowing the practice’s policy was to pass on strays to a local dog shelter where he would find a new home.
Tammy, 43, told the court her benefits had been cut and she could no longer afford to keep Alfie so she took the “heartbreaking” decision to let him go.
McPhillips texted later to say he’d done what she’d asked – but Alfie was never seen alive again.
A month later his body was fished out of the canal at Underwood Lock, near Allandale, Stirlingshire, by a lock-keeper, who told the court that at first he thought it was a dead badger.
