Dog goes nuts. Destroys Elvis's teddy bear...

[itzamirakul]

Barney, a 6 year old Doberman guard dog at Wookey Hole Children's Museum in England "went beserk" and has just destroyed a $900,000 teddy bear collection including a 1909 Steiff Bear named Mabel that once belonged to Elvis when he was a child.

The taste of teddy bear was Hannibal Lechter-ist as Mabel ripped the heads and limbs off of the teddy bears and pulled out the stuffing and spread the mess all over the museum's floor. Good thing there were no children there at the time of the surprise teddy bear attack.

(Barney may have heard of some covert attack being planned by the teddy bears and took preemptive action after conferring with Rumsfeld.)

The Elvis bear was on loan from a private owner who is reported to be understandably quite upset over his loss. (Of course the Elvis bear can be repaired but its value will never be the same as serious teddy bear collectors will attest.)

Edit: Correction of dog and bear names.

[DRoseDARs]

1. Since you didn't provide any link...

http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/ap/world/4090868.html

LONDON — A guard dog has ripped apart a collection of rare teddy bears, including one once owned by Elvis Presley, during a rampage at a children's museum.

"He just went berserk," said Daniel Medley, general manager of the Wookey Hole Caves near Wells, England, where hundreds of bears were chewed up Tuesday night by the 6-year-old Doberman pinscher named Barney.

Barney ripped the head off a brown stuffed bear once owned by the young Presley during the attack, leaving fluffy stuffing and bits of bears' limbs and heads on the museum floor. The bear, named Mabel, was made in 1909 by the German manufacturer Steiff.

-snip-

[itzamirakul]

2. Thanks for the link. I got the story from my AOL Welcome page...

Also, thanks for the correction in names. Mabel is the bear and Barney is the dog. :)

[DRoseDARs]

3. I can't stop laughing about this. I am reminded of the old axiom...

"A fool and his money are soon parted." Instead of owning $900,000 worth of some old teddy bears and displaying them in a children's hospital, how about selling them and donating the money to the children's hospital? There's something deliciously poetic about this story... :)

[xchrom]

4. barney was all: chew toys! and they're all mine!

[Solly Mack]

5. Poor doggie

He just couldn't bear it anymore.

[acmejack]

6. You're disgusting!

At this hour, too! Here's the link I was going to post from the BBC, the English are always so droll...

http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/rss/-/2/hi/uk_news/5240832.stm

[Solly Mack]

7. The pun also rises

I like droll :)

[Commie Pinko Dirtbag]

21. It ain't nothing but a hound dog. -nt

[HuffleClaw]

8. must have smelled banana/peanutbutter deep fried sandwiches

i googled 'steiff bears' and they are some expensive. damn. ouch. they are hundreds of dollars, some are even $1400 USD. and they are FUUUGLY to boot.

screw elvis and his teddy. pity about the collateral damage though.

[acmejack]

9. As an owner of several dogs, I certainly relate.

Thousands of dollars worth of stuff over the years (I'm old, so this cumulative). Now my Sis, who has been successful, has been hit her puppies have always unerringly went for the most most expensive things in her home-designer clothes, imported italian furnture, etc.

LOL! as I typed this there was a blurb on the local news for a Teddy Bear Hospital, Ace Tailors, that would repair yoour "injured" Teddy bear!

[HuffleClaw]

13. i wonder if they discriminate

is it TEDDY-only? or if yer miffy is hurt can she get care? do you need blue cross?

[no_hypocrisy]

10. Not to worry. Lloyds of London was up all night, filling out the claim

forms.

[Dangerously Amused]

11. I call bullshit.

NO WAY would a dog chew up "hundreds" of teddy bears - or anything else - in one night. I've watched plenty of dogs - my own and those of others - play with stuffed toys. When a dog plays he will stick with one favorite toy, at least for a while, and then maybe go on to another toy. But he sure doesn't go through "hundreds" of toys, one right after the other, for the hours on end that it would take him to get through that many.

Furthermore, I can see him picking out a bear or two that smelled particularly yummy to him, and going after those, but some of those old teddy bears couldn't have smelled like anything (drycleaning solution, mothballs, or must, maybe?) even remotely interesting to a dog.

Beyond that, I find it hard to believe that all of those valuable bears were stored low enough to the ground, and unprotected i.e. not behind glass, to be so easily within the dog's reach.



I'll bet anything that this is an insurance scam.

[China_cat]

12. You've evidently never had a hyper dog

I had one that ate the rockers off a chair, the legs off a coffee table, half a recliner and 3/4's of a couch. In less than 2 hours.

They were TOYS. And some dogs just love them. My new dog, in fact, somehow dug out a stuffed frog that had belonged to our Scarlet (who died almost 3 years ago) and hadn't been seen in at least 2 years. I have NO idea how she found it or where.

[Dangerously Amused]

17. I don't doubt you.

But you wouldn't put that dog in charge of your $900,000.00 stuffed toy collection that you didn't want him to play with, would you? I mean that type of a playful/destructive nature is going to be firmly ingrained and readily observable in a dog from early on. And if that is the case and the guard dog really had that temperament, then I don't think it's fair to blame the dog for this incident by saying that he "suddenly went berserk" one night. I think the owner is to blame for putting a dog with that known tendency in a position where he could and was likely to do that measure of damage. Which leads me to the question, why would a person give the dog that opportunity...?

I still say the story is fishy.

[livvy]

14. I see where you're thoughts are,but in this case,and looking at the pic...

it looks kind of like my family room after an afternoon of "play".

I have one bouvier that will do "investigative surgery" on one stuffed toy, remove the much prized squeaker, and move on to another when I take the squeaker away. I am forever picking up parts, stuffing, etc. I buy stuffed toys in bulk.
My very first dog, gutted a couch in less than an hour. I came home to find her close to cardiac arrest from the effort, proud, but panting like hell.
I bet this dog was bored, started playing with one, and decided to find out what smelled so dang interesting inside it. When no one was there to tell him it was not what he was assigned to do, the party began. Probably the best night of guard duty he's ever had!

[Dangerously Amused]

18. My last two dogs played the same way.

The goal seemed to be to remove the squeaky heart first, and then disembowel and dismember the remains. But again, I don't see a dog doing this nonstop to literally hundreds of stuffed animals in a row. Doing so would take hours on end, no? And likely dry out the dog's mouth to the point of being uncomfortable? As you noted, your dog destroyed a couch in less than an hour... but at some point within that hour became bored and/or exhausted and/or uncomfortable, and stopped.


Thanks for the photo. I didn't see that, nor did I read the original article before I wrote my first post. But now that I see it, well... I honestly don't see the limbs, heads and stuffing from "hundreds" of teddy bears laying about. I do see several baskets of small bears overturned, but it looks like most of the little bears remain close to the basket, where they fell. So I presume they must be counting each of those little toys as being "chewed up" in the "rampage" to make their claim of "hundreds" of bears destroyed.

I am not familiar with the news source/reporter, so I don't know their record for journalistic integrity. However, the carefully worded article implies that the entire $900,000.00 collection was destroyed, because the first mention of the word "collection" refers to only those bears which were destroyed, but the second use of the word "collection" refers to the entire collection, worth $900,000.00:


"A guard dog has ripped apart a collection of rare teddy bears, including one once owned by Elvis Presley, during a rampage at a children's museum."

then,

"The collection, valued at more than $900,000, included a red bear made by Farnell in 1910..."


In the sequence of the sentences using the word "collection," the second sentence disingenuously incorporates the first by inference.


The facts themselves, in fact, seem to be suspect here as another article quotes the same source as saying:

"Up to 100 bears were involved in the massacre." (Emphasis mine.)

http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk_news/story/0,,1835785,00.html?gusrc=rss&feed=11


While in yet another article:

"Barney chewed up all the bears, worth nearly $1-million." (Emphasis mine.)

"http://www.kpvi.com/index.cfm?page=nbcheadlines.cfm&ID=35533"


Additionally, this entire "rampage" by the "berserk" dog lasted only "several minutes," according to the security guard at the scene:

"A security guard at the museum, Greg West, said he spent several minutes chasing Barney before wrestling the dog to the ground."

(Source in OP.)


So, basically what happened is that the security dude let his dog wander off for several minutes and during that time the dog knocked over some baskets of small stuffed toys and chewed on a few others. Hardly a rampage, hardly a berserk dog. Some unfortunate and substantial damage, yes, as the Elvis bear alone - the most valuable - was worth between $58,000.00 - $75,000.00 (according to various sources). But not nearly the $900,000.00 worth of damage to which the article alludes.


So in conclusion, I abandon my position that this was an insurance scam, and instead assert that this incident, while unfortunate, was highly sensationalized to the point of being deceptive and unprofessional (save for the damage to Elvis' bear, which was the only truly newsworthy aspect of the incident).


I guess the moral of the story - for me, at least - is to do my homework before drawing conclusions.


:7

[livvy]

19. I agree with your assertion...

Maybe the journalist went to the "Rover Rummybush" School of Journalism!

[Dangerously Amused]

20. Yup, probably just a cub reporter trying to make a name for himself

...by breaking this "bombshell," and spicing it up a little along the way. As you noted, much like the Bush propaganda.


:hi:

[leftyladyfrommo]

15. This sounds like my dogs.

Everyone else seems to have these well behaved dogs - and then there are mine.

[livvy]

16. Ha! Me too.

I like my feisty fidos just the way they are, though. They got personality!

[leftyladyfrommo]

22. That's what I tell myself, too.

Personality in spades.

Actually, Molly went to the Vet yesterday and only tried to bite him twice. That was really good for her.