A police horse on duty at a park in east London suffers multiple injuries after being attacked by an off-leash dog on March 22, Wednesday.
The Metropolitan Police shared a series of photos on Twitter of the police horse, named Urbane, with all the injuries he sustained during the attack.
In a video footage, you can see the dog continuously biting the horse’s legs despite people trying to stop it.
One person in the video is even heard saying “this is is so bad”, as the horse is seen frantically evading the dog’s attack and buckling due to the injuries it sustained.
The dog, which was later identified to be an American Bully named Coco, has been seized for assessment by the police.
And its owner, seen wearing a tracksuit in the video footage, insisted that his pet dog is friendly. “With any human she’s so good. I don’t know why it happened,” the owner said.
According to a report by the Sun, the owner blamed the police horse and said, “She was intimidated by the horse. She felt threatened.”
But eyewitnesses in the park told The Sun otherwise. One witness who was walking her own dog said Coco seemed far too interested with the horses and could tell that it was ‘looking for a fight’.
In addition to that, the owner also accused a witness, seen using a long stick to stop the dog from attacking, as ‘rude’.
Thankfully, PH Urbane has been to the vet, received the necessary treatment and is now recovering. “He will hopefully be back on duty as soon as he has fully recovered but not before,” the Met wrote.
The Met also reminded people, “We can’t stress enough how important it is to keep dogs on a lead if you can’t recall them or get them under control.”