It turns out Golden Retriever Sundance has very expensive taste — literally. The 12-year-old Montana dog is making headlines today because several months ago, the pooch made a snack out of his owner’s money stash. In all, the money-hungry pooch devoured five $100 bills for a grand total of $500.
Sundance’s owner Wayne Klinkel is barking mad; while he loves his dog, $500 is a lot of money to lose.
“I thought ‘You dumb SOB,” Klinkel jokingly tells KOLO 8 News Now. “I couldn’t believe he did that.”
The infamous $500 incident took place around Christmas. While taking a trip from their home in Montana to their daughter’s home in Denver, Colorado, Klinkel and his wife made a pit stop for a quick bite to eat. As the couple ran inside a restaurant to grab some grub, they left Sundance in the car. The Klinkels also left five $100 bills and a single $1 bill in the car with Sundance — and that turned out to be a big mistake.
Mere moments later when Klinkel and his wife returned to their vehicle, Klinkel noticed a half of a $100 bill chewed and drooly in the front seat. The rest of the stash was nowhere to be found — with the exception of the $1 bill. It seems the smallest currency wasn’t enough to entice Sundance’s appetite, and it sat there untouched.
The vehicle doors were still safely locked, but the money was gone. Klinkel knew the culprit immediately — the angel-faced Golden lounging in the backseat.
“Sundance is notorious for eating anything and everything,” he says, “so right away I knew what happened.”
While the Klinkels continued their road trip to Denver, Wayne Klinkel’s vacation duties now involved taking care of Sundance’s vacation doody. After years of cleaning up after Sundance, Klinkel knew that Sundance can’t easily digest paper, so Klinkel had to keep a close eye on his dog’s waste to make sure Sundance would not suffer from any dangerous intestinal blockages as a result of the gluttonous Golden’s pricey snack.
“I pretty much recovered two fairly complete bills, and had some other pieces,” says Klinkel. “But it wasn’t nearly enough there to do anything with it.”
Soon after the Klinkels and Sundance returned to their Montana home, their daughter and her husband, Amy and Coty Church, came up for a visit. The Churches brought along a gift for dad — a bag full of bits of $100 bills.
“[Amy] said ‘Oh, Dad, look what Coty found in the back yard,” Klinkel remembers. “They found it after the snow had melted.”
With these extra pieces in his possession, Klinkel decided to try and get his money back. After giving the shredded bills a very thorough cleaning and taping as much of each bill together as he could manage, Klinkel decided to bring the pieces to the nearest Federal Reserve Bank in Helena, Montana — the “bank’s bank,” where regular banks send worn out or tattered currency to be destroyed and replaced. Employees at the Fed told Klinkel to bring the bills to his local bank, but Klinkel says the teller there explained the bank couldn’t take the bills even though they were cleaned because they wouldn’t be able to give them to other customers.
So with all other options exhausted, Klinkel has sent the dog-eaten currency to the Treasury Department’s Bureau of Engraving and Printing with the hope that the government will cut him a check to replace the unusable bills. During his research, a government employee told Klinkel he only needs 51 percent of the bills in order to receive a reimbursement, but that the process could take as long as two years.
But Klinkel — ever patient when it comes to his buddy Sundance — doesn’t mind the wait.
Source: KOLO 8 News Now
