CONVICTED (2024) | Aidan Lewis, born c. 2004, of Albert Street, Dunblane FK15 – allowed his two off-lead XL Bullies to attack a blind spaniel, causing fatal injuries.
Six-year-old blind cocker spaniel Maggie was being walked on the lead by her owner in the Braemar Park area of Dunblane in March 2024, when Aidan Lewis’s unmuzzled and unleashed dogs attacked.
Lewis had been issued with a dog control notice only four months before, after an earlier incident in which his “strong” animals, Nova and Coco, escaped from his garden and seriously injured another dog.
Prosecutor Tiffany Chisholm said Maggie’s owner saw the XL Bullies “running towards her” while Lewis shouted at them to come back.
Realising her pet was about to be attacked, the owner tried to pick her up but before she could, Novo and Coco set upon the dog, biting her on the neck and stomach.
Ms Chisholm said the woman began “screaming” for help.
Lewis and the woman both tried to pull the dogs off but due to their strength were unsuccessful.
A passer-by who heard the woman’s screams rushed to the scene.
He put Maggie in his car and together with the owner, took her to a vets’ where she was found to have multiple puncture wounds to her neck and muscle and an abdominal hernia.
An X-ray revealed further internal injuries and Maggie’s owner decided it would be best to have her euthanised.
Lewis pleaded guilty to allowing his dogs to be dangerously out of control, and breaching the Dog Control Notice served on him by Stirling Council.
Solicitor Frazer McCready, defending, said Lewis was “horrified and appalled” at what his dogs had done, and he’d had them put down.”
He said Lewis had no other dogs, and it wasn’t his intention to own more dogs.
Sentencing | four months of youth custody. Banned from owning dogs for ten years (expires September 2034).