Subscribe | UPI Odd Newsletter Subscribe Jan. 4 (UPI) -- A Pittsburgh couple whose dog ate an envelope filled with $4,000 cash said they were able to recover $3,550 -- but it was dirty work. Clayton Law said he and his wife, Carrie, were having a fence installed at their home in the Point Breeze neighborhood, and the workers requested to be paid in cash, so he left an envelope filled with $4,000 in $100 and $50 bills on the kitchen counter. Advertisement Law said he returned to the kitchen about 30 minutes later to find Cecil, the couple's 7-year-old goldendoodle, making a meal out of the cash. "I walked back into the room and then all this cash was on the ground. He's just like this, standing there, and I'm just like oh my gosh, he ate some of this money and was in shock. I yelled to Carrie, 'He ate the money, he ate $4,000,'" Law told KDKA-TV. The couple set about trying to reassemble the shredded bills, and came up with $1,500 worth of bills with serial numbers that were intact enough to have them replaced by their bank. A couple more $100 bills were retrieved later in the evening when Cecil vomited, but the rest of the money involved a lot of waiting -- and a whole lot of very dirty work. Advertisement The couple sifted through Cecil's droppings for the next two days and used a utility sink to wash the shreds of paper so they could be taped back together. "I never thought I'd be able to say I've laundered money, but there is apparently a first time for everything," Carrie Law told The Washington Post. In the end, the couple were able to salvage $3,550. The couple said they are going to mail the rest of the bill remnants to the U.S. Treasury Department in the hopes of recovering more of the money, but if not, they will at least have a fun story to tell their son one day. "We've kept at least one of the torn-up bills so we can do a piece of artwork and frame it to commemorate the entire situation," Carrie Law said. "Not that we'd ever forget." The Laws said Cecil, who is normally very well-behaved and has never so much as stolen food from the counter before, is out of the doghouse. "We couldn't be mad at him -- he's a very lovable dog," Carrie Law said. "People often tell us there's a human trapped inside our dog." Read More Letter mailed in 1943 finally delivered to family 80 years later S.C. woman folds 10,000 Starburst wrappers into world's longest chain Escaped sheep found wandering loose in Niagara Falls, N.Y.
