A RETIRED 83-year-old vet has walked free from court, despite breaching a suspended jail sentence which banned him from keeping dogs.

Aubrey Fuller allowed his lurcher dogs to attack three sheep in less than a month at Sheepstor.

Plymouth magistrates banned him from keeping dogs for ten years last November and imposed a 28-day prison sentence, suspended for 12 months.

But the court heard that within two weeks he was caught with two of his lurchers at his home.

Mr Fuller admitted breaching the ban, which put him at risk of an immediate jail sentence.

But district judge Paul Farmer allowed him to walk free after hearing that he had sold his house in Sheepstor and was moving to Ireland.

The ban on keeping dogs does not apply in that country.

Mr Farmer said: 'Nothing would be achieved by activating the suspended sentence order.'

Eoin McCarthy, for the Crown Prosecution Service, said police found Mr Fuller's lurchers, Daisy and Patch, at his home on November 16 last year.

Sarah Glanville, for Mr Fuller, said he had been in the process of rehoming his dogs with his brother.

She said: 'He has had the same family of dogs since 1953 and they are very important to him. I spoke to his daughter and she told me they meant more to him than she did.'

Miss Glanville said Mr Fuller had sold his home and was going to live with his daughter in Warwickshire for a couple of months before moving to Ireland.

She added that his health had deteriorated since he had first appeared in court.

Mr Farmer, who legally has to make the suspended sentence order more onerous, ruled that he should live at his daughter's house for six weeks.

Mr Fuller was given a six-month conditional discharge and ordered to pay £80 prosecution costs.

The magistrates heard at his original trial that some of the six lurcher dogs he had at the time savaged sheep on common land near his farmstead in the village.

One farming neighbour claimed the dogs were in 'killer mode' and could even have attacked a child.

The trial was told that two of Mr Fuller's dogs had been shot by a sheep farmer after the last attack in March last year.