Cecil, a 7-year-old goldendoodle, had never done anything wrong in his life until the day he ate $4,000 in cash.
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Clayton Law had withdrawn a portion of his savings last month to pay the workers who installed a fence at his home in Pittsburgh, where he lives with Cecil and his wife, Carrie. After returning from the bank with a sealed envelope full of $100 and $50 bills, he placed the money on the kitchen counter.
Thirty minutes later, he was surprised to find small pieces of chewed-up bills scattered on the floor. In a panic, he shouted to his wife, saying that Cecil had eaten $4,000.
“I ran in, thinking I had to have heard him wrong, but when I saw the mess, there was no doubt. I thought I was going to have a heart attack. Cecil had really done it,” Carrie said in an interview with The Washington Post.
While Cecil took a nap on the living room couch, the couple called the veterinarian to find out if they should take him to be examined for having eaten the pile of money.
“Given his size of 100 pounds, we were told as long he was eating and drinking and going to the bathroom, he should be fine. If he were a small dog, it would have been a different story,” Clayton recounted.
So, the couple decided to save what they could of the chewed-up money. They gathered the torn bills and managed to salvage about $1,500. Carrie then called the bank and told a manager what had happened.
The manager explained that the bank would take back all notes that had been taped with the complete serial numbers visible on the front and back. The Bureau of Engraving and Printing also generally requires that at least half of each note be recoverable.
“Cecil was sitting on the sofa full of $2,500, and we knew there was only one way to get that money back,” Carrie recalled. Cecil vomited a few hundred dollars, so Clayton put on gloves and went to work to recover what he could.
Over the next two days, the couple took Cecil for walks in the yard to retrieve the rest of the money in the dog’s poop. “Here we were, waiting for the dog to go to the bathroom so we could get the rest. We had to laugh at the absurdity of it.”
Carrie and Clayton managed to recover about $1,800 from Cecil’s poop, bringing the total to $3,550. They said it’s the price they have to pay for a family story they can tell their child. “We couldn’t be mad at him — he’s a very lovable dog.”