A Stirling man who beat his dog with a golf club so badly it had to be put down has been jailed.
Terry Thurling battered his Romanian Shepherd, Griffin, with the makeshift weapon because he could not cope with its “challenging behaviour”.
A neighbour and a nurse at a nearby medical practice contacted the Scottish SPCA and council dog wardens and Thurling, 43, was charged.
Stirling Sheriff Court was told that on April 24 last year the neighbour reported seeing through the windows of Thurling’s flat in Stirling’s St Ninians area the dog was “running from room to room”.
Thurling appeared to be striking it with something.
The neighbour then heard Griffin “crying for 20 minutes”.
At around the same time, the nurse heard the dog in distress and phoned the SSPCA.
Stirling Council then received a call from Thurling, who said he wanted Griffin put down, saying his pet had bitten him.
Golf club ‘bent out of shape’
Dog wardens attended and Thurling admitted he had hit Griffin with a golf club.
Wardens saw the golf club in the hallway was “bent out of shape”.
Griffin, whose head was covered in blood, was described as “quiet” and was showing no signs of aggression, according to the dog wardens.
He was taken to Broadleys Veterinary Hospital in Stirling, where an X-ray found depressed fractures in his skull and he had to be euthanised.
The court was told an examination found a lesion on his back consistent with a cigarette burn, though this did not figure in the charge against Thurling.
The unemployed chef, of Cornhill Crescent, St Ninians, pled guilty to causing Griffin unnecessary suffering.
‘Clear he shouldn’t have taken the dog’
Thurling also appeared for sentence on a series of unrelated charges, including resisting police, assaulting a retail worker, and committing a statutory breach of the peace at a hospital.
Solicitor Fraser McCready, defending, said his client had owned Griffin for 10 months.
“It’s quite clear he should never have taken on this dog.
“He wasn’t the original owner and from my instructions it’s quite clear that the dog had challenging behaviour and Mr Thurling wasn’t up to dealing with that behaviour.
“At some stage, having been bitten, he hit the dog with a golf club.”
Mr McCready said Thurling had been furloughed during the Covid-19 pandemic and had not returned to work since.
He said he had ongoing undiagnosed mental heath difficulties.
Sheriff Keith O’Mahony banned Thurling from owning or keeping a dog for 15 years and jailed him for a total of 19 months.
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