Monday, December 08, 2008

This Man's Best Friend Was Too Obedient

From the Darwin Award web site:


Late one night, the inhabitants of Yuvieyna village, a suburb of Lugansk, awoke to a loud explosion. Not long before the explosion, a 40-year-old deputy of the local administration board had taken his dog out for a walk. He encountered a Police Academy cadet who was escorting two women to their homes.

The cadet pointed out that the deputy's dog was not allowed on a public street without a lead and muzzle. Now, only an exceedingly bold cadet would be presumptuous enough to tell a village deputy what to do, so the two men began to argue. Unable to resolve the matter by verbal means, the deputy finally pulled out a military RGD-5 hand grenade and threw it to the cadet's feet. His well-trained dog immediately ran for the object and fetched it for his master... and man and dog met the same messy fate.

Police are investigating how the deputy came to have a grenade in a country where citizens are forbidden to carry arms, let alone military ordnance.
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3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Poor dog! I believe everyone has to have a few books on the book shelf for lively discussions and the Darwin Awards is one of those on mine. It never ceases to amaze me just how stupid some of the stories are--good thing the survival of the fittest wins out!

Heather Houlahan said...

This is the plot device of the Jack London story "Moon Face," and from the way he set the story up, I have a feeling that the basic trope "Faithful dog retrieves explosive hurled by owner" goes back quite a ways. It has the feel of a re-worked bar story.

Maybe it was first a 9th century Chow bringing back the fireworks.

The "Darwin Awards" are notoriously unreliable in the veracity department; I couldn't find reference to this one on Snopes, so who can say?

Anonymous said...

Urban legend or not -- considering how ball crazy my dogs are I certainly won't be playing with any hand grenades while they're around!