We’ve all heard the line about the dog eating your homework, but here’s a tale about a pooch that was fortunate to receive a “passing grade” after it ingested the hooked contents of an angler’s flybox.
For some time, Deborah Carlson of Pullman, Wash. knew her German shepherd, Frieda, had a special affinity for bugs, gleefully pouncing on the ones she found in the backyard before gobbling them up. So, when a box of her fishing flies was discovered overturned with the contents nowhere to be found, Carlson presumed the worst.
“I had 16 brand-new flies. I had not had time to crimp the barbs yet so they were barbed,” she told the Lewiston (ID) Morning Tribune. “I took a pencil and sifted through all the chewed-up paper on the floor and could not find any of the flies.”
To be certain, Carlson, who works at Washington State University in Pullman, took Frieda to school’s College of Veterinary Medicine, where a friend of hers is employed.
X-rays indicated 15 flies had passed through the shepherd’s throat, stomach and intestines and were “on the home stretch.” The missing 16th lure was never located.
It wasn’t long until the bug-loving dog successfully passed all 15 hooks–without a single, uh, snag.
“It’s just amazing none got stuck in her stomach or throat, and these were barbed,” Carlson told the Lewiston paper. “It’s just one more thing to go in her little scrapbook.”