A THUG who smashed a puppy's head with a wooden truncheon has been banned from owning animals for life.

Peter Scotter battered the 14-week-old Staffordshire bull terrier pup after it fouled the kitchen floor, Sunderland magistrates court heard yesterday.

He said he attacked the dog because it had snapped at his three-year-old son, but admitted a charge of cruelty.

Scotter, 40, is already serving a 21-month sentence for throwing bricks plastered with racist stickers through the window of a Sunderland house used by asylum seekers. At Durham Crown Court in July he admitted the attack on the house in the Hendon area.

At yesterday's hearing, Scotter's girlfriend, Patricia Ancram, who owned the puppy said in a statement that Scotter frightened the dog after it fouled the carpet, but said he later calmed down.

When she returned from a driving lesson, Scotter emerged from the house and knocked on the car door triumphantly, saying: "I've killed your dog...unlucky."

Scotter admitted killing the animal after repeatedly hitting it with a truncheon, before punching and kicking it.

He told police: "I killed it, that's good enough isn't it? I hit it because it was snapping at my son's face."

Scotter, of Smyrna Place, Hendon, Sunderland, but currently at HM Prison Durham, was disqualified from owning animals for life and given a four-month jail term to run concurrently with the sentence he is serving.

RSPCA Inspector Gaye Bayliss, speaking after the case, said: "The sentence shows it was a severe case of cruelty."