William Mocsari of Rodden Street in Kircubbin is charged with causing unnecessary suffering to a dog.
Newtownards Magistrates' court heard he allegedly confessed to his social worker that he got a dog which was "free to a good home" from a website.
He then strangled it with its own lead, "skinned it and fed it to his other dog".
A police officer told the court that as well as the alleged confession to his social worker, "traces of dog fur were found in the fire".
She said there were strong objections to Mr Mocsari being freed on bail as he is considered a danger to the public.
The defendant appeared in court via video link from Maghaberry prison.
He is also charged with driving offences and being in possession of class C diazepam drugs.
A defence barrister told the court that Mr Mocsari still had not had a mental health assessment despite the judge ordering one in December.
Judge Hamill ordered Mr Mocsari to be produced from prison and made a further order that "someone senior in the Prison Service accompanies Mr Mocsari to explain to his court why the order about mental health has been ignored".
The case was adjourned until Tuesday.

Eric Prokopi, 39, had admitted three charges when he appeared in court in December 2012.
Prosecutors in New York described him as "one-man black market in prehistoric fossils".
The Tyrannosaurus bataar skeleton was returned to Mongolia in May 2013.
Prokopi had sold it at auction in May 2012 for more than $1m ($600,000) but it was then seized by the US government.
Prosecutors said that from 2010 to 2012, Prokopi misrepresented the contents of dinosaur fossil shipments to the US from Mongolia.
He also admitted illegally importing a Chinese flying dinosaur, two oviraptors and a duckbilled creature known as a Saurolophus.
One of the Saurolophus skeletons was sold at an auction in California for $75,000 but was later confiscated by authorities.
Prokopi - described as a commercial palaeontologist who sold coral, fossils and other items from his home - was arrested in October 2012.
"I sincerely love fossils," Prokopi told US District Judge Alvin Hellerstein in Manhattan on Tuesday.
"What I did was wrong, and I failed to appreciate the gravity of what I have done."
Prokopi's home address was given as Williamsburg, Virginia, although at the time of the offences he was living in Gainesville, Florida.
Judge Hellerstein said a prison term would send a message to others in the commercial palaeontology field.
"He is clearly not a bad person, but he has done a bad thing," Judge Hellerstein said.
Assistant US Attorney Martin Bell said Prokopi had helped investigations into possibly illegally imported fossils that were continuing in Wyoming, California and New York.
Mongolia said the near-complete Tyrannosaurus bataar skeleton was stolen from the Gobi desert.
A 27-year-old man has been charged with killing, skinning and cooking a dog before feeding it to another animal.
[NEXT_CONCEPT]
A US fossils dealer has been jailed for three months for smuggling dinosaur bones including those of a 70-million-year-old Tyrannosaurus bataar from Mongolia.