Dog pays for his crime

Some small amount of justice for a canine offender for a change: After two weeks in the slammer waiting for his date with the judge, Winston, who attacked a police car in Tennessee, has been sent to court-ordered obedience training.

If your dog chases cars and you wonder what he'd do if he caught one, take a look at the following video. Winston reportedly broke through two fences, and then persisted in attacking until he tore the bumper completely off, as recorded by the camera in another police car. Note how enthusiastically he seems to be enjoying the process.



Fortunately, the police don't mess around when you assault one of their own. Winston was called a "model prisoner" and his owner claimed he'd "been a model pet" up to the incident, but despite that - and despite his obvious attempts to use the adorable guilty look in the above photo - officials were not fooled into letting him off easy.

According to the Chattanooga Times,Winston will need to show that he has rehabilitated himself: they will drop the citation for Winston being a "potentially dangerous dog" after six months if he completes obedience training classes successfully and commits no further offenses.

Suspiciously, however, there's no word on what happened to Winston's partner in crime in that video. How did he get off so easy?

The war between dogs and chickens

You'd think dogs would feel secure in their place as humanity's favorite pet. (Yes, statistically there are more cats, but that's because there are many multiple cat households. However, more people own dogs.)

And you'd think there's nothing unusual about killing a chicken, as far as bad dog behavior goes. Even a recent story like the one about the hen that adopted a litter of rottweiler puppies is unlikely to make a fundamental change in the dynamic between the two species.

But keep reading the story headlined "Plucky the chicken dies after dog attack" and the plot seems to thicken:

The loss has hit the Hawkes family hard. Plucky came into their lives a year and a half ago when Sharan Hawkes’s husband, John, found the chicken wandering around in front of their home.

She became the family pet, living in a coop in the backyard of the Dix Street home.

And the Hawkes family launched an effort to change Waltham’s zoning regulations to allow homeowners to keep one chicken as a pet.

Chicken-keeping is reportedly become more and more popular. Is it possible that dogs feel threatened by the possibility that our pet-owning choices could be broadened? That perhaps they realize that chickens not only don't get hair on the sofa or jump up and slobber on guests, but they even contribute something to the household in the way of foodstuffs?

If that was the underlying motivation for this heinous act, the Hawkes family of Waltham vows not to let it succeed:

If the measure does pass, the family intends to buy another pet chicken.

"In Plucky’s name we’re going to continue this," she said.

Hen mom who should not expect any gratitude from the Daily Mail.

Is it those big brown innocent eyes that do it?

All over the world, dogs get away with crimes against property - even when their own owner's money is involved. A dog who ate a checkbook was accused of driving his owner to theft, but no charges of conspiracy were filed, as we saw earlier in July.

And when a dog in North Carolina ate $400, did his owner make him go out and get a job to pay her back? No - she picked through his poop to find pieces of bills to wash off and paste together.

Sadly, when an owner does try to hold his pet accountable for misuse of funds, he gets no help from the police, as a Kenyan man found:

NAIROBI - Robert Njeru, 25, of Nakuru, took his dog to the local police station after it chewed up almost 3 000 Kenyan shillings (about R250).

The farmer had left his rent money for the month on his bed when he went to work.

When he returned that night, all that remained were a few shreds of banknotes on the floor.

A furious Njeru marched his dog down to the police station and demanded that officers lock up the animal.

Police reportedly refused until he paid them 50 shillings to make it worth their while.

On hearing about the story, the district police boss fired the officer for accepting a bribe and released the dog back to its owner.

Police spokesman Steven Karungu said: "It was a really stupid thing for the police to lock up a dog after being given a bribe. It degrades the police force in this area.

"It is true the dog ate his master's money, but it was because of his own carelessness, and he should deal with his problems by himself and not involve the police."

Njeru has still not forgiven his dog and has put it up for sale for 20 shillings.

Photo from Flickr user mil8, who notes: "Reason to keep 'big bills on the inside' of a money clip #45: Dogs will get tired eating their way through the small bills."

The dog ate my checkbook

OK, it's not fair to entirely blame the dog for this one... but can we agree to blame the dogs for making the excuse so plausible?

ARLINGTON, WA. -- A woman believed to have stolen money from her ex-husband's bank account told police her dog made her do it.

It's an excuse Arlington police haven't heard since the homework-eating dogs of high school, spokeswoman Kristin Banfield said.

The case started when an Arlington man, 42, went to police in late March to complain that money was disappearing from his bank account.

Detectives filed court orders to follow the money trail, Banfield said. The money was being used to pay utility bills and other sundry items at the man's ex-wife's home, outside of Arlington.

Detectives were suspicious of the woman, 50, when they learned her excuse for dipping into her ex's funds without permission.

"Her dog got into her purse and ate all her personal checks," Banfield said. The woman reportedly told police she had no choice but to take funds from her former husband's account.

"The dog ate my checks was the first excuse. There were multiple excuses," Banfield said.

Now the woman is under investigation for identity theft and forgery. Arlington police have forwarded the case to Snohomish County prosecutors.

Roscoe the pug of sainted memory, eating cash - a cautious dog does not accept checks - by Flickr user Zoomar.

Bad animals in history: cliche comes alive

The dog ate my homework: it's an excuse that's as old as homework. Grownups can use it too, though: here's your precedent.

Perhaps one of the most famous and influential bad animals in American literature, Toby, a setter, destroyed the first manuscript of John Steinbeck's Of Mice and Men.

Steinbeck had nothing but excuses for this behavior; William Kennedy explains:

In 1933 John Steinbeck was so poor he couldn't afford a dog. The literary critic Lewis Gannett uncovered this fact in Steinbeck’s correspondence with his agents during the time he was writing Tortilla Flat... “I need a dog pretty badly,” Steinbeck wrote. “Apparently we are headed for the rocks. The light company is going to turn off the power in a few days . . .”

By the time he was writing (Of Mice and Men) he had earned enough money to buy a dog—a setter named Toby who, one night, alone with the Of Mice and Men manuscript, made confetti of it. “Two months’ work to do over,” Steinbeck wrote. “There was no other draft. I was pretty mad, but the poor little fellow may have been acting critically. I didn't want to ruin a good dog for a manuscript I'm not sure is good at all.” Mice, as Steinbeck called it, was critically acclaimed, became a Book-of-the-Month, and a serious movie, but the suddenly famous Steinbeck still had his doubts. “I'm not sure,” he wrote, that “Toby didn't know what he was doing when he ate the first draft. I have promoted Toby-dog to be lieutenant-colonel in charge of literature.”

The excuses are no surprise from Steinbeck, clearly a lifelong sucker for dogs. Not only did he count his lack of a dog as an equal hardship to his imminent lack of electricity, he is of course famous for writing an entire book about traveling cross-country with his standard poodle, Charley - who is introduced as follows:

Charley is a born diplomat. He prefers negotiation to fighting, and properly so, since he is very bad at fighting. Only once in his ten years has he been in trouble - when he met a dog who refused to negotiate. Charley lost a piece of his right ear that time.