A dog owner has been banned from keeping dogs for one year after a viral video showed a man hitting his dog with a shovel. 

Police were called to an address in Hackney on November 8 last year to reports of a man assaulting a dog in the back garden of a property. 

Officers attended and found an injured dog that was then taken to an animal hospital for treatment. 

A distressing video of the incident was shared on social media. 

The following day Simon Thomas, 41, of Pembury Place, Hackney, handed himself in at a police station. 

He admitted that the dog was his but denied that it was him hitting the dog. 

Thomas later pleaded guilty to failing to prevent the causing of unnecessary suffering to an animal. 

At Stratford Magistrates Court on February 2 he was fined £375, ordered to pay £1,419 in costs and banned from keeping dogs for one year.