A man who loaded two horses on to a float and then led police on a high-speed chase through Hamilton - during which one of the animals was fatally injured - has been jailed for two years and one month.

Ngāruawāhia farm worker Kresten Stephen Fitness, 26, appeared in the Hamilton District Court on Thursday facing 12 charges including unlawfully taking horses Tyson and Saxon, valued at $2000 and $1000 respectively.

Those horses were the property of his employers and landlords, who owned and ran the farm near Ngāruawāhia where he lived in a caravan, parked on the other side of a gully from their house.

Fitness was also sentenced by Judge Noel Cocurullo on charges of reckless driving, failing to stop for police, unlawfully taking an Isuzu motor vehicle and a trailer - each valued at $5000 - driving while disqualified, refusing a blood specimen to be taken by police and resisting police.

The sum total of all those charges means Fitness cannot legally get behind the wheel before April 1, 2022 at the earliest.

There were also two charges of ill treatment of an animal. The first related to Saxon and alleged that Fitness put the horse into the float, failed to stop for police, drove recklessly and thereby caused Saxon to get extremely agitated.

The second charge relating to Tyson is similarly worded, but contained the addendum that Fitness drove recklessly "causing the horse to lose its footing, causing it distress to the extent that it was necessary to destroy the animal in order to end its suffering".

A charge of threatening to kill a police officer was earlier withdrawn by the police.

Fitness has to pay the horses' owner $2800 in reparation, as well as a further $798.92 to Hamilton Veterinary Services.

He was towing the float carrying two horses in Hamilton when complaints were received about his driving about 6.30pm on Thursday, May 10.

He was found a short time later on Killarney Road, but ignored requests to stop, leading to a police chase. At one point, a police car was rammed during the pursuit.

When he was eventually stopped by road spikes, which were deployed in Te Rapa, about seven kilometres north of central Hamilton, one of the horses was found to be badly injured and, as the charges reflect, had to be put down. The other was escorted to a nearby paddock.

HORSES ABDUCTED

Fitness's escapade began on the farm sometime between 4.30 and 6pm when, without permission, he took an Isuzu four-wheel drive and a horse float and loaded the two animals on to it.

He had never before driven a vehicle with a horse float attached and, as the police summary of facts points out, the horses did not know him well.

Fitness made tracks to Hamilton. Because of his evident inebriation, he was not driving particularly well and at one point became involved in a "road rage-style" incident with another motorist, who called the police.

Police caught up with him on Killarney Road. In spite of the lights and siren on the following patrol car, Fitness carried on.

He drove around the block on to Lake Domain Drive and then back on to Killarney, at times straying into the opposite lane and causing oncoming drivers to take evasive action. He zoomed through several red lights at speed and, at the intersection of Greenwood and Massey streets, deliberately drove into a second police car.

He roared down Forest Lake Road at 80kmh, forcing more motorists to pull over.

His 18.4km, 21-minute flight came to an end when he drove over the police spikes on Te Rapa Road.

Even then Fitness was less than co-operative and he refused to leave the vehicle. Once the police managed to extract him, he attempted to pull away from and kick the officers and he refused breath and blood test procedures, even when he was taken to the Hamilton Police Station.

As the summary notes, "the entire time from when the defendant was apprehended on the roadside through the drink-driving procedure, his demeanour was belligerent, abusive and obnoxious ... with derogatory comments on what he was going to do to police staff and their family members".

BABY DEATH

Prior to sentencing, Fitness' counsel Wayne Dollimore said his client had little memory of the escapade.

Fitness had become depressed by the death of a baby at Christmas, and he had "resorted to his age-old problem of alcohol".

"He can only remember the police involvement and being in the cells," Dollimore said.

Fitness had attended a restorative justice meeting with the horse's owners, who had taken a magnanimous position and wanted him to be kept out of jail so he could address his alcohol issues in a more rehabilitative environment.

Since the incident he had been co-operative with the police and was genuinely remorseful.

"Prisons don't work when it comes to alcohol problems of this magnitude," Dollimore said.

Judge Cocurullo was not swayed, noting that it was Fitness' seventh conviction for drunk driving.

It was pure luck that he was not facing far more serious charges involving other people on the road that day.