Shropshire dog trainer whose animals killed dozens of sheep to be sentenced

Charles Ross-Robertson, from Stanton Lacy, near Ludlow, has admitted his two dogs were responsible for going on a sheep-killing spree at a farm in Herefordshire last year.

He will now face sentencing at a date to be set in May, and his two Rottweiler-cross dogs will be destroyed, Hereford magistrates decided. Ross-Robertson, 64, had already indicated he would plead guilty at Hereford Crown Court in January, but the case was returned to magistrates court yesterday for the charges to be clarified by the Crown Prosecution Service.

At the time of the dog attack, Ross-Robertson lived at Risbury, near Leominster but has since moved to the Ludlow area. He had a business as an animal behaviourist specialising in training undisciplined and aggressive dogs, and claimed to have worked with the police and the Army in a 40-year career.

But on September 2 his two dogs Brindle and Bourneville escaped and ran amok in a neighbouring field full of sheep, which farmer Thomas Hadley described as being left "scattered" with dead animals, worth about £21,000. The dogs have been kept in kennels since the attack, at a cost to the public of £7,500, but an application has now been made for their destruction.

Ross-Robertson was previously taken from court in an ambulance when he appeared at Hereford Crown Court in January, but in the following days indicated he would plead guilty to being in charge of the dangerously out-of-control dogs.