A former mental health nurse who killed and cooked his dog before feeding it to his other pet dog has been jailed for two years.
Dominic O'Connor will serve another two years under licence in the community and has been issued a life ban from keeping animals after he used a lead to strangle the animal to death in Northern Ireland in December last year.
Sentencing the 28-year-old at Downpatrick Crown Court, judge Piers Grant branded the defendant's behaviour "disgraceful" and "heinous".
He said: "The killing of this innocent, vulnerable dog has clearly been your calculation for some time.
"It is clear that you determined to kill this dog and in doing so inflict on this creature serious cruelty.
"In any view this behaviour is barbaric."
The court heard how O'Connor, of Roden Street, Kircubbin, County Down, bought the dog on the Gumtree website before choking it to death at the second attempt after switching leads.
He then shaved the animal, butchered it and cooked its body before using it as pet food for his other dog.
The judge said: "It is appropriate to recognise that the level of cruelty inflicted on this poor animal is very much at the upper end of the spectrum for this type of offending."
He said the crime was calculated as O'Connor knew there was a chance he could have been caught when he disposed some remains in a black bag in nearby Portavogie Harbour.
The judge said O'Connor showed no remorse and posed a high risk of reoffending.
As he was taken away a member of the public gallery shouted: "Burn in hell, demon. You are the epitome of evil."
Judge Grant admitted the killing could be indicative of mental illness but said O'Connor's lawyers were unable to produce any reliable medical evidence about his mental health.
He also said some of the defendant's 23 unrelated previous convictions demonstrated that he was prepared to act irresponsibly.
