Usually, the closest dog poop gets to “exciting” is when it happens on your brand-new silk sheets or some other treasured object. The poop itself is rarely treasured, unless it’s a sign that your pup has finally gotten over that nasty case of constipation.
Yet in the case of Angie Collins, an English woman who cares for dogs being trained for police duty, the poop of one of her trainees suddenly became very valuable. On Dec. 23, she was manicuring her nails at home and got up to go to the kitchen for a few minutes. When she left, her diamond wedding ring was sitting on a side table. By the time she got back, it was gone. A trainee dog named Jack had apparently decided that the ring looked like a delightful toy. The setting and the ring were found mangled on the floor, but the diamond, worth £18,000 (that’s $29,563 for us Yanks), was gone.
“My husband and I emptied the entire room bit by bit, which took hours,” she told the BBC. “I could only conclude that Jack had eaten it.”
And so began the 48-hour diamond-in-poop hunt. While not quite as difficult as looking for a needle in a haystack, it was a lot stinkier.
Even though the vet told her that a dog’s stomach was so complex that it was unlikely she would ever see her diamond again, Collins was determined. As a responsible dog walker, she bags the poop when she takes Jack out for a walk anyway. But now, she began taking each bag of poop home and using a garden hose to run it through a sieve. She says she did this four times a day, until two days later, when Jack’s poop gave her a beautiful Christmas present — her diamond.
“I thought it was futile,” she said. “But the sun was shining, and there it was.”
In my day, I’ve had dogs devour foodstuffs, books, clothing, and just about everything that was reasonably soft and chewy. Never have I had a dog go for something as hard and indigestible as jewelry. What was it that was so appealing about the ring? Was Jack offering some kind of commentary on the marital relationship? Collins believes he liked it because it was shiny.
“It must have winked at him,” she said. “I went to the kitchen, came back and it was gone.”
So all’s well that ends well. If you’re willing to comb through enough poop, apparently good things will happen to you, especially on Christmas. Or something like that. As for Angie Collins, she says she plans to get the stone set and insured as soon as possible. The diamond will soon be back on her finger, polished and devoid of canine excrement.
Via BBC
