A man who killed his daughter’s Jack Russell by swinging it overhead by its lead and smashing it to the ground up to 30 times has insisted: “I’m in hell over what I did that day.”

Liam Dowling – a 44-year-old lone parent – broke down as he relived the attack on his daughter’s eight-year-old dog Milo, saying: “I’m walking around holding my head down in shame.”

On Tuesday, Dowling avoided jail at Dublin Circuit Criminal Court despite gardai outlining graphic witness accounts of the animal’s death – including how he was seen putting his foot on the dog’s head while it was on the ground and pulling the lead tight.

In his only interview since being outed over the horror attack, Dowling this week blamed a cocktail of drugs for his actions.

“I can’t explain it,” he told the Sunday World.

“I have no memory of that day because of the amount of stuff I took. I was on me methadone and I took me anti-depressants and other drugs… I don’t usually do that because of the way they react.

“I don’t remember other people who were in the park who were meant to have come over and approached me. When I was in the garda station I was still hazy.

"It wasn’t until the next day when someone said it was on the internet and that some of the girls in the college had put it on their phones that I recollected it. But even now I can’t remember what I done to him.

“I mean I couldn’t swing a dog 30 times in the air, I mean you wouldn’t be able to… and I wouldn’t.”

At Tuesday’s sitting, Garda Shane Mengessidis recalled how Dowling walked across a park filled with children near Dublin’s Clonliffe College on August 19, 2014, swinging the dead animal over his head, until he entered some bushes.

Witnesses, including children, subsequently saw Dowling re-emerge with only the dog’s lead.

Dowling told gardaí at the scene that the dog had run off, but later admitted killing the pet.

Garda Mengessidis said a vet with the Dublin Society for Protection of Cruelty to Animals (DSPCA) found the dog had died from repeated blunt force trauma to its body.

Dowling later claimed the dog, a family pet of eight years, had been sick for up to five months and he didn’t have the money to pay for vet bills.

Dowling repeated those claims when confronted by the Sunday World this week, before describing Milo as a beloved family pet.

“I got him when he was a pup eight years ago and he was like one of the family,” he said.

“The thought of what happened makes me sick… even thinking about what happened makes me sick.

“He was me pet, me family’s little pet. Eight years we had him, eight years. But he was sick for months…he just couldn’t stop vomiting. We had him at the vet and all.

“But I’m a lone parent – I have me daughter and that’s all. I’m not a cruel person, I wouldn’t harm any animal.

“I didn’t bring him down there that day to do that to him. This has destroyed me life and me daughter’s life. I have to hold me head down in shame now.”

At the court hearing Judge Martin Nolan commented that “by any standard what happened to this poor dog was incredibly cruel”, but noted that Dowling had been on prescription drugs at the time. He further noted that Dowling cares for a child and is a “contributing member of society”.

The judge intends to impose 200 hours of community service in lieu of a two-year sentence if Dowling is suitable.

He said he would not impose a ban on Dowling keeping animals, as he did not want to deprive the man’s child of having a dog.

Dowling told the Sunday World that he had been prepared to take whatever punishment was handed down.

“As far as I was concerned I should have paid for what I done,” he said.

“I wasn’t in the right state of mind, but it still shouldn’t have happened. I am very sorry and I’m very sorry to the people who had to witness it as well. There’s nothing more I can do now.

“It’s going to haunt me for the rest of my life. I’m in hell because of this.”

Originally published in the Irish Sunday World.