Pa. family’s dog eats $4,000 in cash

Remember the age-old excuse you gave your teacher, the family dog ate my homework?

Well, imagine how infuriating it must feel to know that the family dog ate your wad of cash instead.

It happened to one couple in Pittsburgh, when their dog named Cecil – who they say is normally well-behaved – chowed down on dozens of $50 and $100 bills, according to KDKA and The Washington Post.

The crazy occurrence happened on Dec. 8, when Clayton Law put an envelope of cash on his kitchen counter.

He withdrew $4,000 out of his joint savings account when he and his wife were having a fence installed at their home, where the workers requested to be paid in cash.

After he came back from the bank with the sealed envelope of $100 and $50 bills, he placed the money on the counter intending to put it away but he never got the chance.

Sometime later, 30 minutes to be exact, Law came back only to find chewed-up bits and pieces of the money strewn about on the floor. In a panic, he called for his wife, 33-year-old Carrie Law.

The 7-year-old goldendoodle was the one to blame.

“I walked back into the room and then all this cash was on the ground. He’s just like this, standing there, and I’m just like oh my gosh, he ate some of this money and was in shock. I yelled to Carrie, ‘He ate the money, he ate $4,000!’” Clayton Law said to KDKA.

“He was shouting, ‘Cecil ate $4,000!’” Carrie Law recalled.

“I ran in, thinking I had to have heard him wrong, but when I saw the mess, there was no doubt,” she said to The Washington Post. “I thought I was going to have a heart attack. Cecil had really done it.”

Turns out, Cecil ate a lot of the bills, and the rest of the bills were chewed into pieces on the floor. They believed Cecil had wolfed down at least $2,000.

To the couple, this was out of the ordinary for the beloved dog, who has been with the Laws since he was a puppy five years ago.

“He has never in his life tried to get anything from a counter, even the coffee table. We could leave dinner and go to the kitchen and grab wine, and he would not touch the food, and he just doesn’t care. He just took this opportunity and ran with it,” Carrie Law said to KDKA.

“Cecil’s a goofy guy and he’s very particular — you could leave a steak on the table, and he wouldn’t touch it because he’s not food motivated,” Carrie Law said to The Washington Post. “But apparently he is money-motivated.”

“He doesn’t do many dog things, he doesn’t chew furniture or clothing, that’s why we’re extra shocked when he decided to do this,” Clayton Law said to KDKA.

Taking extra measures, the couple checked with their vet only to be given a clean bill of health for the 100-pound dog.

But the money Cecil ate left the couple short of about $2,000.

“Just trying to find numbers, we’d recover something from something he left in the yard and say oh my gosh, we have a 6 for the serial number. And try to get that taped on,” Carrie Law said to KDKA. “We had to have the majority of the serial number on both sides and the bank said if you tape it, that would help. So, I brought everything in a plastic bag and brought gloves for them.”

Salvaging what they could and washing the chewed-up bills a couple times before bringing the money back to the bank, they ended up piecing together all but $1,500 of the money back, The Washington Post reported.

“I felt like a kid who says, ‘The dog ate my homework,’” she said to The Washington Post. “I was surprised when they said they’d seen similar things happen multiple times — that maybe dogs liked the particular smells on money.”

Even though Cecil threw up a couple of torn hundreds late that first night, he’s expected to be okay and is doing just fine nearly four weeks later, both outlets reported.