Dog starved

Press, Volume CXV, Issue 34021, 9 December 1975, Page 13

Dog starved

(X Z Press Association) HAMILTON, Dee. 5. A 21-year-old man who allowed his dog to 'Starve to a stage where it had to be destroyed jwas gaoled for two : months when he | appeared in the Supreme | Court at Hamilton yesterday on a charge of aggravated cruelty. Colin Lindsay Payne, of Kib Kio, a painter, changed his plea to guilty when he : appeared for trial earlier in ithe week. The charge of aggravated icruelty to an animal, between

April 1 and June 18. was brought by Mrs G. Garrick, secretary of the Waikato Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals. Payne had been convicted in the Hamilton Magistrate’s Court for failing to exercise the dog and the case was an appropriate one, under the Act, for the defendant to be disqualified from owning that type of animal. Mr Justice Moller said that it was perfectly clear Payne treated the dog in such a way that the only mercy for it was to kill it. He found it incomprehen- ' sible that the dog was at the | same time a loved pet, as I stated by the defence, or that : the offence was out of charlacter for the defendant.