A money-hungry pooch was in the dog house for chewing up $4,000 (£3,153) cash that his owners had left out.

Cecil, a golden poodle from Pennsylvania, has gone viral for snacking on the envelope of money his owners had set aside for a contractor.

Clayton and Carrie Law pieced together most of the shredded bills after a smelly search of Cecil’s droppings and vomit – only $450 is still missing. Cecil’s veterinarian told the couple their greedy pet would be OK.

In early December, Clayton Law laid an envelope containing $4,000 on his kitchen counter at his home in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. He and his wife, Carrie, needed to pay their contractor in cash for installing a fence. About 30 minutes later, to his surprise, he found his beloved dog enjoying the priciest meal of his life, leaving rough strips and scattered pieces of cash everywhere.

“Suddenly Clayton yelled to me, ‘Cecil’s eating $4,000!'” Carrie Law said in an interview with the Pittsburgh City Paper. “I thought, ‘I cannot be hearing that.’ I almost had a heart attack.”

The Laws described Cecil as “a goofy guy” when speaking to the Washington Post. “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 told the paper. “But apparently he is money motivated.”

While Cecil scurried off to the couch to nap off his meal, the pair immediately called Cecil’s veterinarian to see if he would need any medical treatment. Luckily, because Cecil is a larger dog, they only had to monitor him at home.

The couple then began an unexpected and laborious jigsaw puzzle: Piecing together their shredded notes.

Before they even began taping together their puzzle, however, they had to wait for Cecil to cough up the cash. After that, they scrubbed the bills thoroughly.”There we are at the utility sink,” Carrie told the City Paper. “It smelled so bad.”

The couple then attempted to tape together the destroyed $50 and $100 bills bit by bit. They worked to locate the serial numbers on both sides of the bills to ensure the banks would accept and replace them with fresh notes. The bank took most of the notes – they were unable to recover $450 – and told the Laws that these types of incidents are fairly common.

A similar situation occurred in 2022, Newsweek reported, when a Florida woman’s labrador ate $2,000 (£1,576) in cash. A video of the incident, which made the dog a momentary internet star, showed the pet owner in tears.

The Laws, meanwhile, said they are trying to see the levity of the situation, writing on their viral video that “the remaining scraps will be our most expensive piece of art”.

(BBC)