When elderly farmer Frank Cook saw a neighbour's dog threatening his lambs, he would have been within his rights to shoot it dead.
Instead he fired a warning shot just behind the terrier, peppering its back leg with pellets but sparing its life.
Mr Cook, 77, says he went to the neighbour, apologised and offered to pay any vet's bill although the dog was wagging its tail and did not appear to be seriously hurt. But the neighbour said he had called the police.
Minutes later, says the farmer, he was standing on his lawn with his two young grandchildren when six police cars roared up and dozens of officers poured out, five of them armed.During the humiliating fivehour ordeal which followed, Mr Cook, a former churchwarden, says he was forced into an armlock, handcuffed, sworn at and bundled into a police car.
