Pet food just got way more expensive for one dog-slash-jewelry store owner: A canine in Albany, Georgia, seems to love diamonds as much as some women--he just eats them instead of wearing them. 'Honey Bun' the Pomeranian gobbled roughly $10,000 worth of diamonds he seems to have mistaken for snacks.
'Honey Bun' is kind of a store mascot at John Ross jewelers. When one of the jewelry store's owners, Chuck Roberts, got up from a chair to meet an arriving customer, 'Honey Bun' apparently saw an opportunity for snacks. The jewelry store's owner apparently had four packs of diamonds, each of which containing about $10,000 in loose 1-karat diamonds meant for earrings, when one of those packets reportedly went missing from his desk. The store's owner did find an empty packet on the jewelry store's floor. The Pomeranian may have been present but other important things were missing: some very expensive diamonds.
'Honey Bun' the Pomeranian seems to have thought an actual honey bun had dropped: X-rays confirmed the pup as a diamond thief of sorts, two blank spots on the x-rays revealing the lost $10,000 dollars in diamonds were in fact inside the dog. And those diamonds were retrieved in the way commonly known to dog owners whose pets have ingested the wrong thing. After being cleaned, the jewels were sent back to the supplier. No word on why the jewelry store's owner passed on keeping those particular gems.
If it all sounds unusual, canines swallowing the wrong stuff isn't exactly unique -- but some things ingested by dogs do carry more fame.
It was only a bit more than a year ago when a much larger dog than a Pomeranian ingested a gem worth double ten grand, in what may be the biggest jewelry heist ever performed by a canine: A golden retriever swallowed up a pricey diamond, eating a 3-karat diamond worth about $20,000 after the gemstone was dropped on the floor of a jewelry store in Rockville, Maryland.
George Kaufmann had brought his golden retriever, 'Sollie', to his jewelry store at Robert Bernard Jewelers every day when he and his business partner, Robert Rosin, were meeting with a diamond dealer. The trio was reportedly viewing the 3-carat diamond when it fell on the floor near 'Sollie' -- and the rest was history. Kind of. 3 days later, when the dog finally passed the diamond, 'history' was complete -- and everyone could breathe easy again.
There is more than one similarity between the $10,000 and $20,000 diamond-eating incidents -- aside from gobbled gemstones: Both jewelry store owners chose to return the gobbled diamonds back to the respective dealers, after cleaning the gemstones.
On the upside for both jewelry store owners in Georgia and Maryland, neither canine owner faced an astronomical vet bill related to removing the ingested items -- instead receiving advice for those diamonds to naturally pass, with no surgery required. Other dog owners aren't quite so fortunate: Costs for 1-year-old 'Sophie' in Colorado Springs skyrocketed after the Bassett Hound ate 31 rusty roofing nails, resulting in medical procedures costing roughly $3500 -- an average of more than $100 per eaten nail.