A Portuguese man has been arrested in Switzerland after his two dogs were thrown to their deaths into a local river.
The 36-year-old is accused of having tied the dogs to an iron bar and left them to drown in the Aare river in Aarburg.
The animals’ carcasses were found on Saturday afternoon by a passer-by who alerted police.
The man was arrested two days later and now faces up to three years in jail.
A human rights lawyer cited by Swiss newspaper 20 Minuten suggests however that “a 12-month sentence with a fine is more realistic”.
The man’s wife, also believed to be Portuguese, said it was her fault that her husband drowned the animals.
“Things just weren’t working out with the dogs,” she told the newspaper.
She said she felt ill several times because the pets “stank” and she just did not have the patience to care for them.
“It’s my fault he killed them. I pushed him to get rid of the dogs. We wanted to give them away, but nobody wanted them,” she said.
When she noticed the animals weren’t home, she asked her husband what had happened.
“You don’t want to know,” she told police.
Carla, who is in her fifth month of pregnancy and is calling on police to release her husband, added: “My husband has a good heart. He would never have done such a thing for himself.”
Neighbours interviewed by 20 Minuten were disgusted.
“Sometimes I could hear animals crying all day. They really suffered,” said one of them, adding that he had already reported the situation to authorities. He said if his neighbours had responded “properly”, the tragedy wouldn’t have happened.
Another neighbour said the wife had tried to offer her the dogs, but she had not been able to accept as she didn’t have enough money to care for them.
