Pennsylvania Couple Sifts Through Dog Waste After Doodle Eats $4,000 in Cash Off Counter

Clayton and Carrie Law were able to recoup $3,550 of their money after their doodle had a surprise snack

CBS Pittsburgh/YouTube

Carrie and Clayton Law sit with their dog Cecil

The dog days are finally over for a couple in Pennsylvania.

Clayton and Carrie Law had to fetch $4,000 in bills out of their dog Cecil's bodily waste last month after the pup decided to eat an envelope of money they left on their kitchen countertop.

The ordeal began when Clayton walked in on their doodle standing over a pile of "mutilated cash" not long after leaving the money in their kitchen, he told TODAY. He also awoke to Cecil gagging in the middle of the night, when the 7-year-old dog was struggling after devouring the family's home improvement budget.

As the pair told TODAY, they left their envelope of money on the counter after taking it out for the sake of investing in a new fence. But it didn't last long.

"When you hear that, you immediately just react, so I jumped out of bed and just made sure that he didn't throw up anywhere. Not great," Clayton said of Cecil gagging. "And then I went to pick it up...and I realized: 'There's a lot of like half-eaten and $100 bills and $50 bills here.'"

Carrie called the dog's decision "pretty shocking," as jumping on the counter was never "of interest to" the 100-pound pup. "It was so out of character that it just didn't seem real," Clayton added.

According to CBS affiliate KDKA, the couple believed their dog swallowed a total of around $2,000 in bills.

Then began the task of sifting through Cecil's bodily waste, as Clayton and Carrie would pull out pieces of bills, wash them multiple times and begin to put them together like a puzzle. To have their money exchanged at the bank, the couple was required to provide more than 50% of each bill — and they were quite close to the margin, getting a return of $3,550.

"They said it actually happens quite a bit because money just picks up so many scents, especially if it's used in the food industry," Carrie told TODAY of the bank. "I guess dogs pick up on that — they have such a good sense of smell — and something about it just drove him crazy."

The process of recovering the bills meant looking at their serial numbers, Carrie told KDKA, as the two would recover money "from something [Cecil] left in the yard" and piece the numbers together.

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While the fence project is now on a bit of a hiatus, the couple decided to still make some art out of the remaining pieces of Cecil's eaten bills. Plus, a clip of the ordeal has since gone viral on social media, showing Carrie and Clayton wash the damaged bills and tape them back together.

As they noted in the video, Cecil has "never done anything bad in his life."

"Finally ready to talk about last week 💩💸🐾," Carrie captioned the video. "The bank assured us that this happens all the time."

"We're just happy the story's making people laugh," Carrie told TODAY. "I think a lot of people can relate to this because we've all had a pet or a kid that has done something silly like this in one way or the other and you just can't be mad at them. You just have to love them anyway."

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