Dog knifed as owner fought, court told

A man plunged a knife through a pedigree dog's neck while the animal's owner was fighting another man nearby, the Whangarei District Court has heard.
Matthew Te Rore, of Kaihu, has pleaded not guilty to charges of wilfully ill-treating a dog (stabbing it to death), possessing an offensive weapon and conversion of a vehicle.
His trial began yesterday, with the dog's owner, Shane Aitken, telling Crown prosecutor Anna Patterson he saw Te Rore stab his 50kg neapolitan mastiff through the neck at Kaihu, north of Dargaville, on February 17 last year.
The dog had been sitting on the back of Mr Aitken's ute at the time of the knife attack, he said.
Mr Aitken also said his vehicle was taken following the incident and after getting a lift home with friends, he found his dog lying dead in a ditch.
His ute turned up in his driveway the next day with "stab holes in the passenger doors, a bent running board, one head light smashed and full of blood".
The chain of events began in the early evening when a 16-year-old youth went to Kaihu Motors to buy a loaf of bread.
When he arrived he was yelled at and hit around the head by a friend of Te Rore's, the youth said from the witness stand.
The youth then drove to Mr Aitken's place to tell him what had happened and the pair returned to the scene of the attack.
The youth said soon after they arrived the man who attacked him turned up again and approached him. Mr Aitken stepped in and asked what was going on. The man pushed Mr Aitken, who then threw the man on his back and held him in a headlock.
Mr Aitken said he then saw Te Rore - who had been sitting in his vehicle in his mother's driveway - walk behind them with a long knife and stab his dog.
The youth said soon after he grabbed a wheel brace and hit his accused attacker over the head two or three times because he feared for Mr Aitken's safety.
"I thought he was going to die," he said.
Mr Aitken tried to get the keys out of his ute but Te Rore "lunged at him with a knife", the youth said.
Te Rore and the other man then chased chased Mr Aitken and the youth down the road but they hid until police arrived.
Te Rore's lawyer, Wayne McKean, said in his opening statement that he would address why his client, who had been parked in his mother's driveway, had a knife in his possession ... "was it simply to cut some mutton for his mother?"
He also asked what the law allowed a person to do when watching a "mate being beaten up".
On the car conversion charge, Mr McKean said the real issue was if his client had taken part in taking the vehicle. And on the dog stabbing charge, he said: "What does a person do when they believe a neapolitan mastiff has locked onto your arm"?
The trial was expected to end today, with the 12-person jury pondering a verdict.