A dog owner whose animal was found with a broken leg and almost half its normal weight has been allowed to keep his current pet by magistrates.

Jobless Andrew Sydney John Berry, 29, pleaded guilty to a charge of animal cruelty when he appeared before Bingley Magistrates and was fined fined £250 with £200 costs.

The court heard that an RSPCA inspector visited Berry, of Simpson Street, Keighley, after a tip-off and found the young black cross-bred dog called Socks underweight and limping. The pet was checked over by a vet who said it had a fractured right leg, sustained up to two weeks before, and was suffering vomiting and diarrhoea.

John Eyre, representing the RSPCA, said: "It would have been very painful and it would have been obvious to the owner there was something seriously wrong with the leg."

He said four weeks later when the dog was re-examined it had almost doubled in weight from 4.65kg to 7.7kg.

Nigel Jamieson, mitigating for Berry, said he didn't have day-to-day care of the dog, which stayed with his mother and her partner, and the injury was caused by Socks fighting with another dog and falling down steps.

"He takes full responsibility for what happened and realises he didn't take the dog to the vet as soon as he should have done."

Chairman of the bench Harold Woodward said: "We have thought long and hard about whether we should disqualify you from keeping a dog and we have decided on this occasion not to disqualify.

"You can keep your dog but you must be aware of the fact that should you at any time not give it full and proper care the next bench are likely to say you cannot keep dogs for a very long period of time."

Speaking after the hearing, Inspector Richard Oddy, of the RSPCA, said he was disappointed by the result.

"A disqualification is what we go for in every case, I would rather have some very low financial penalty and a reasonable length of time ban. All cases cause unnecessary suffering, whether deliberate or omitting to provide treatment of some sort."

Socks, who is almost a year old, has been re-homed.