The youth who slashed his dog's throat committed a cowardly act of cruelty and was rightly punished by a ten-year ban on keeping animals.

However, he should have been treated equally in law to an adult committing the same crime.

If persons, no matter what their age, deliberately set out, as this boy did, to kill another sentient creature, they should be named and shamed and sentenced according to the severity of their crime, not their age.

The law should not protect them. Society should, nonetheless, put this isolated case - as far as dogs in this country are concerned - into perspective.

Every day, farm animals are forced into out-of-sight slaughterhouses to have their throats slashed legally.

-David Hammond, North Court, Hassocks