AN ANIMAL rescuer has been left “sickened” after finding a dead dog had been weighed down with breeze blocks and shrouded in a sheet.

Michael Knight, co-owner of Gemini Kennels in Wickford, fears the one-year-old boy Staffordshire bull terrier was alive when it was dumped in the sheet, along with the heavy blocks and a dog’s play toy.

Mr Knight, Thurrock Council’s dog warden, made the grim discovery in a patch of woodland at Davy Down, in Back Lane, South Ockendon, after being tipped off by a member of the public.

He said: “It’s just sickening, there’s no other way to describe it.

“The dog was dead when the sheet was discovered.

“I think they put the blocks in there because they were going to drown the dog, but realised the nearby lake was too shallow. So they just dumped it instead.

“I don’t know if the dog was alive or dead, but perhaps the blocks were used to stop it struggling and getting out.”

Michael called the RSPCA and an investigation has now been launched.

He added: “They are trying to determine exactly how the dog died, then we will know more.

“Even if someone has tried to bury their dog in this way there’s no excuse. You don’t dump a dog in parkland and why would you need to weigh it down?”

Several years ago Michael was called out to nearby Hangman’s Woods, in South Ockendon, after a thug hung a German shepherd dog from a tree.

He added: “It never ceases to amaze me the way some people treat animals.”