AUSTIN, Texas -- Thursday night for killing her husband's dog. It started as a domestic dispute and ended when the woman grabbed the dog and a knife.

The gruesome nature of this crime could send the woman to prison for several years.'This was a particularly nasty crime and such a criminal act is not going to be tolerated here in the city of Austin,' Lt. Doug Dukes with APD Strategic Command said.

An act simply heinous by definition, and a woman obviously saddled with emotional problems. Thirty-one-year-old Joanne Hinojosa turned herself in to police just before 3 p.m.

Police say she butchered her estranged husband's dog stabbing it 27 times...

...The dog, named Marti, suffered stab wounds to the abdomen, lungs, spleen, diaphragm and other internal organs.

Police found the dog with the knife blade still in the abdomen.