Horror find of dead dog

Animal welfare officers are appealing for information after a dog was found dead having been starved to death and its body thrown over a fence.

The Staffordshire bull terrier was found in Edinburgh yesterday morning, in what the Scottish SPCA said was one of the worst cases of animal cruelty it had investigated.

The dog, discovered by a local resident in a garden on Whitson Road, weighed 8.7kg, less than half the weight it should have been. The Scottish SPCA's chief inspector Paul Anderson described the case as "horrendous".

He said: "We haven't carried out a post mortem yet, but the immediate indications are this poor dog starved to death and hadn't been dead long."