Family dog chomps $750 cash

Debbie Hulleman’s dog Pepper has been known to gnaw on lipstick and munch on shampoo bottles. But Pepper got Hulleman into a real mess after gobbling nearly $750.

“This is probably the worst,” Hulleman said Thursday, recalling how she poked through vomit and dog piles in the yard.

Hulleman had asked her mother in Oakdale, Minn., to take care of Pepper and her other dog last month while she and her husband went on vacation. Pepper, an 8-year-old black Labrador-German shorthair, got into a purse belonging to her mother’s friend and chewed the cash from an envelope.

Hulleman’s mother recovered some of the money that Pepper spit out. But when Hulleman returned and went to clean up her dogs’ mess outside, she saw a $50 bill hanging from one pile.

The chore of sorting through dog feces netted about $400, said Hulleman, 50. Between that and other bills that Pepper had either vomited or simply chewed on, the family recovered $647.

They swapped the soiled money for fresh currency at a bank. “I soaked it and strained it and rinsed it,” Hulleman said.