A BATTERED XL Bully lies dead on a bloody blanket behind a block of flats, its paws red raw and its tongue hanging out.
Four hundred miles away another is discovered mutilated in an alleyway, tied up with its legs burnt and one of its ears sliced off.
This week a bully-type dog was found dying, tied up in a black bin liner behind a Tesco in Birmingham. He was severely underweight and had breaks to his neck, back, legs and ribs.
He was rushed to an animal hospital but died on the treatment table.
All across the country, from Nottingham, where two dogs were abandoned on an industrial estate, to Telford, where an animal spent hours tied to a lamppost, XLs are being dumped and, in extreme cases, slaughtered.
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This is the brutal result of callous owners and breeders who refuse to pay just £92 to exempt their dogs from a nationwide ban brought in after a spate of attacks by XL Bullys.
The Sun tracked down the alleged owners of the dog found burned and mutilated in Carshalton, south London, just hours before the ban on the breed came into force on December 31.
They claimed to have given up the animal - found with a broken skull - six months previous but neighbours allege they saw them with the dog days before.
We also spoke to the owner of an XL found unconscious on a bloody sheet outside a Rutherglen, south of Glasgow.
It’s believed the dog was sent to Scotland - which only announced its own ban this week - until from England months before to avoid the crackdown.
It was advertised for sale just weeks before being found dead. He denies killing the animal.
Vigilantes have attacked the homes of both men after they were named on social media, smashing windows and in Glasgow, leaving knife marks across a front door.
The mum who made the grisly discovery in Scotland told The Sun: “This owner is the real animal, not the innocent dog.”
Last weekend, groups of XL owners staged a Bully rebellion in a protest in Manchester.
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But two weeks after the ban was introduced, desperate owners are still flouting the law - by either heartlessly abandoning them or smuggling their dogs to Scotland, where the new law is yet to come into force, and Ireland.
It’s now prohibited to rehome the animals but Facebook pages are littered with offers to transport XL Bullys to new owners over the border as rescue centres in England say they are overwhelmed with unwanted dogs.
Wendy Campling, a trustee at Baltos dog rescue, said: “All over Britain dogs are being dumped. I’ve seen one in a garden and tied to a post, while another had its ears cut off.
“It isn’t responsible owners who are doing this but breeders who can’t make money out of them anymore.
“Rescue centres are overwhelmed and our mental health is on the floor. It’s horrendous.”
Around 250 homeless dogs who arrived in shelters after October 31 faced being killed at New Year because they didn’t qualify for an exemption to stay there.
But Liverpool rescue centre Carla Lane Animals in Need has won a High Court injunction to review the rules - giving the dogs a reprieve.
Around 3,500 banned dogs were listed exempt in the UK before the ban was brought in - and a further 4,000 XL bully owners have now applied.
When The Sun tracked down the alleged owner of a dog found with its legs burned in London, he claimed he no longer owned the animal and had sold it six months earlier.
But one neighbour told us: “I saw them about a month ago with it and someone else I know said they saw thebm with the dog in the park a few days before.”
When we visited the man’s home he insisted he was being “stitched up” - and claimed vigilantes had slashed the face of a friend in retribution.
He said: “The dog that got killed has nothing to do with us. I don’t know its name, I don’t know anything about it.
“This man put a picture of our dog on social media and said it’s the same dog, but we don’t know what happened to our dog.
“All we know is that we rehomed our dog about six months ago, because we are responsible dog owners and we love animals."
In Scotland, locals blamed the death of the dog in Glasgow on a young man who recently moved into the area.
The woman who found the dog, and asked not to be named, said: “I’m an animal lover and there’s no words to describe someone who could do this.
“There’s a rumour doing the rounds that the dog was fed drugs.”
Many Scottish dog lovers have helped transport dogs into the country.
Taylor Stirling, 21, of Keith, Moray, helped take 30 dogs out of England before the ban - often using a friend’s horsebox.
Taylor, who arranged for dogs to be fostered and adopted an XL bully called Enzo from Sheffield, said: “A lot of breeders who were just in it for the money are abandoning the dogs.
“It's the bad owners who have caused this problem."
