Man cooked collie with OXO cube and onions and fed it to his own pet dog

A Northern Irish man has been convicted for animal cruelty after killing a dog and feeding it to his own pet.

Dominic O'Connor killed a four-year-old collie, Jess, which he bought through Facebook, and cooked it into a stew which he fed to his own dog, Shadow.

The jury took less than five minutes to convict O'Connor following a two-day trial at Downpatrick Crown court after the 27-year-old admitted to causing unnecessary suffering to a dog last December.

The court heard that O'Connor, who has a personality disorder, told police that he first tried to strangle Jess with a lead but because it had "too much give," he used a different lead.

"I strangled it with the shorter lead. Then I cut it up and cooked some of it and fed it to the dog and put the rest of it on the fire," reported the Irish Times.

The County Down man added: "I cooked it and fed it to the other dog with a few onions and an Oxo cube and salt and pepper."

The incident came to light when O'Connor, formerly known as William Mocsari, told a community mental health worker at the Ulster Hospital what he had done.

When police were called to O'Connor's house they found burned dog hair and a liquid on the grate of the fire, where he had tried to burn the rest of the dog's carcass.

A friend of O'Connor told the jury that she saw Jess one day but the next, she was gone, adding she heard O'Connor tell his other dog Shadow: "I told you I was going to get another dog and let you taste it."

She said that O'Connor also later confessed to her about killing and cooking the dog. "In a way he was joyful about it. He was not all there. His head was somewhere else," she said.

O'Connor admitted to the court that people would be disgusted by his actions, conceding that "part of it was wrong."

The defendant will be sentenced on 21 November after probation reports have been submitted to the court.