A dog owner is calling for the gates in a country park to be lowered after his pet crawled underneath one and ended up injuring its leg on broken glass.

The man, who did not want to be named, took his one-year-old whippet Winston for a walk in Manor Park, off St Leonard's Street in West Malling.

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Winston, who was off the lead, was chasing a squirrel and went under one of the gates, only to suffer a nasty cut on a shard of glass.

His owner said: "Both the boundary gates and the gates between certain paddocks have large gaps under, large enough for small dogs to get under in pursuit of squirrels or rabbits.

"Sadly, my little chap received a terrible injury from glass in a particular field that he had accessed under one of these gates.

"Granted, this could happen anywhere. However, my frustration with Kent County Council is that they are claiming these gates are boundaries for the movement of cattle, which is complete nonsense – they are for persons obviously."

The man said that he has offered to resolve the issue himself by extending the bottom of the gates, or by raising the ground level under the gate.

However, he says the council, which owns and manages the park, did not take his offer up on health and safety grounds.

He continued: "I find it very frustrating that as a tax payer, and also considering I pay £55 per year for the privilege of parking in a publicly owned open space, where dog owners are perfectly entitled to allow their animals off lead, that the council's answer to a simple maintenance issue is to lecture owners on recall and keeping your dog under control, and a sheer denial to fix a simple and obvious problem.

"My dog could have easily died. He went to the vets to have bloods, and of course stitches – the cut was millimetres from arteries."

A Kent County Council spokesman said: "While staff litter pick and walk the site’s main paths daily, there are a number of less accessible areas that are not as frequently visited.

"It is always the responsibility of a dog’s owner to ensure they are under control across the whole of our country park sites, for everyone’s protection."