Police are investigating the latest in a series of barbaric attacks on dogs with cocktail sausages — spiked with NAILS.
Sick thugs are deliberately leaving the treats where they will be wolfed down by pets – with agonising consequences.
The latest victim of the cruel prank is Meggie, a black Bernese mountain dog cross, who needed emergency surgery after the sausages were left in her garden.
She was rushed to the vets where X-rays found TEN of the inch-long nails in her stomach.
The eight year-old pet is thought to have eaten five of the sausages and another three were found lying in the garden.
Her owner, a young mum who does not want to be named through fear of reprisals, said: “We are shocked at the level some people go to.
“The sausages must have been planted overnight. There was a gardener in on Thursday trimming the grass so it must have been after that.
“I found three other sausages. She’s had five, so there must have been eight or nine in total.”
The surgery on Meggie cost £990 and she was kept in overnight for observation before returning home to Elgin, Scotland, where she is now recovering.
Earlier this year anti-animal cruelty campaigners offered a £1,000 reward after a similar sadistic incident in Abergavenny, South Wales.
Around 40 cocktail sausages each embedded with up to ten inch-long nails were left lying around a park popular with dog-walkers.
They were luckily spotted before they caused any serious harm but local vets said they could have proved lethal.
Vet Ben Hynes said: “Had it not been for extremely observant people out walking their own dogs we could have easily seen a spate of dogs facing a slow, but certain death.
‘Luckily we haven’t had any emergencies but if we had, the animals would have been suffering from vomiting, bleeding and I have no doubt the result would have been fatal.”
Anti-cruelty group Peta offered £1,000 to help catch the culprits and a spokesman said: “There’s absolutely no way this can be anything other than the intention to kill animals.
“It is imperative that any community faced with such horrific abuse of animals take measures to find the culprit or culprits and stop the violence.
“Animal abusers are a danger to everyone – they take their issues out on whoever is available to them, human or non-human.”
* Other sick spiking incidents have also been reported in Canada where sausages filled with small hooks were found by a dog-owner in Newfoundland.
