The owner of a dog responsible for a horrifying sheep attack has been fined.

In January this year, Downlands Partnership were forced to remove all sheep from Riddlesdown Common following the third attack in what was a matter of months.

This particular time it was Jacob the sheep who suffered multiple bite wounds to its neck, torn muscles and grazes to its back, but managed to survive.

"Last winter an incident occurred in which a dog that was out of control jumped into the grazing fields where our sheep were carrying out their land management work for conservation of chalk grassland and proceeded to attack one of our sheep," grazing officer at Downlands Partnership, Sean Grufferty said.

"The sheep required veterinary care of IV, wound cleansing, antibiotics, painkiller and stitching, as well as many hours of aftercare from our staff for a number of weeks."

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The owner of that dog was recently ordered to pay about £400, which included covering the vet bills.

"This was very important for us in terms of lost revenue when trying to operate our grazing service on tight budgets," Mr Grufferty said.

"We would like to say a huge thank you to the metropolitan police, whose dedicated team brought a successful prosecution against the owner.

"They gave us incredible support and pursued the case to an outcome, which we hope, will serve as a deterrent to future attacks.

"Sadly the reality remains that this incident was completely and easily avoidable by simply keeping the dog on a lead and under control."