Ok, so there's really nothing funny about a beloved pet dying... but when I heard this story from my cousin I belly-laughed for a solid five minutes.

One of my cousin's best friends is taking some kind of evening course in Germany. There is an insurance agent who is also in the class and this story originates from him. This actually happened to one of his customers.

A couple was dog-sitting an elderly Saint Bernard for their neighbors who went on an extended vacation. The couple lives in the countryside outside of Cologne and had to go into the city to do some shopping. The dog was very well behaved so they took him along. I should add that in Germany it is not uncommon for people to take their pets to department stores or restaurants and such. Their culture is much more tolerant of that kind of thing than we are here in the USA.

Well, one of the stops was at MediaMart, which equates to our Best Buy stores. As luck would have it, in the middle of their shopping spree, the dog had a massive heart attack in the middle of the MediaMart and died on the spot. So, there's the couple, an hour away from home, in the middle of this store, with a huge, dead St.Bernard on their hands and people all around.

Well, they were not done shopping and asked the store manager if they could leave the dog there while they wrapped up the loose ends on their shopping list. While the store manager understood their problem, he could not allow the dead dog to be left behind, not even in a storage room for fear that maybe the couple would not return for the dog. Instead, he offered up another solution... He organized a large plasma TV box and had his staff tape up the box and help move it out to the couple's car.

Thankful, the couple agreed and went on to continue shopping, with a dead St.Bernard packed up in a big ole' TV box waiting for them in their car.

After finishing all of their shopping, they returned to their car two hours later only to find that someone had busted their car window and stolen the TV box!!!

Hence the call to the insurance agent, to file a claim for the damages to the car.

Can you imagine having to explain that to your neighbor?? And even funnier, can you imagine the look on the theives' faces, after lugging the heavy box around and finally getting it home! Only to open it up and find they had gone through all of that and ended up with a massive, dead dog???

Well, I thought it was pretty damn funny... had to share! This would be a great SNL skit!

OMGROFLMAO! You're right. It's sad, but hilarious.

I see the funny, but didn't make me laugh.....I'm a huge animal lover, so for me its a for the dogga.....

true -- that the dog dropping dead is sad --
but it was an old dog --that may have avoided its long term suffering .

its 'sorta' hard to believe its true--especially about the couple asking if they could tidy up their shopping remainders -while
they left that huge dead dog in the middle of the store floor --

plus --the TV box was too thin for a fat old st bernard

but still..........

I agree that the dog dying isn't the least bit funny however, I had to laugh at the thieves. It's to bad the dog had to be lost to these low lifes though.

quote:

Originally posted by kittmaster:
I see the funny, but didn't make me laugh.....I'm a huge animal lover, so for me its a for the dogga.....

-gsbadbmr

Well, like I said... Sad. For the record, I have a wonderful little dog and it would crush me if I were the one out on vacation to come back and hear that my dog is no more. (I can't even bring myslef to say it or type it for fear of jinx!)

It's the bitter irony of the "payoff" for the thieves that made me laugh when I heard this (in a room full of people, many of whom were drinking, I might add). Just thinking about the bastages as they get home, thinking they are going to watch some serious HD soccer or movies that night... only to find what they did.

Ira, as for the TV box, I have a current model Sony HD rear-projection LCD TV that came in a big enough box to hold a St.Bernard and a Doberman.

Now, the part about the couple wanting to leave the dog at the store and continue shopping did strike me as very insensitive. It's not how I would have handled the situation, but then again, it was not their dog and they were a good ways from home. They were probably more worried about their neighbor's reaction than they were necessarily sad for the dog having died.

Also, it makes me wonder what ever happened to the pooch. It probably did not get the proper burial it deserved. Beyond what the owners must have felt, that's the truly sad part.

Okay, okay... the more I talk about it, the less funny it becomes. Still, there's some poetic justice about the outcome for the theives. The story would have definitely been better if they would have ended up caught by the cops and ended up on the evening news...

quote:

Originally posted by JT:
Still, there's some poetic justice about the outcome for the theives. The story would have definitely been better if they would have ended up caught by the cops and ended up on the evening news...

and the theives part is the only part I found amusing but the way the dog ended up is sad. Criminals in general infuriate me, to bad justice is served up so rarely.