STILLWATER  — Cottage Grove police said a man attacked his little dog with a machete, leaving it with such severe injuries that it had to be euthanized.

Thirty-seven-year-old George R. Nichols is charged with two felony counts of animal cruelty.

Nichols’s sister said she and her brother had argued over where his Miniature Pinscher would be kept during the day while she was away. She says her brother left home with the dog and came home without it.

Meanwhile officers from St. Paul Park were responding to reports of an injured animal. They found the little dog pinned beneath an overturned portable toilet. The dog had deep lacerations on its head, a fractured jaw and brain hemorrhaging.