A passerby has scared off a gang of youths who had seized two seven-week-old puppies and begun slowly roasting the brother-and-sister pair over a bonfire.
The pups struggled to escape their captors and yelped in distress as their fur began to burn, British newspaper the Daily Mail reports.
The horrifying cruelty, which unfolded on a canal bank in Greater Manchester, northwest England last Friday, came to an end only when passerby Melanie Johnson noticed the commotion, ran over and ordered the youths to release the puppies.
She said the youths were aged in their early teens but that some were as young as ten.
"I was ripping mad and still am to think that anyone — least of all children — could do this," Ms Johnson was quoted as saying.
"If I hadn't turned up, I think they would have burned the dogs alive."
The 32-year-old local resident carried the two puppies home with her, wrapped them in a towel and contacted the RSPCA.
A RSCPA shelter manager said the cross-breed pups still smelled of smoke when they arrived — the fur on one was singed and the other had a small hernia — but that they generally were in good health.
The male pup has been named Guy and his sister Cinders. "Everyone here has fallen in love with them," the shelter manager was quoted saying.
The puppies will go to a new shelter to be re-homed. No arrests have been made over the bonfire incident.
Front page
RSS Feed