WHEN it comes to dogs and accidents, the usual story is of the dog being a heroic rescuer selflessly saving humans in a moment of need.
Naturally, this leads to a dog getting lots of praise, love and in some cases their favourite foods as a treat.
With this said, it was claimed that a dog once pushed children into a river so that he could rescue them and get a steak in return for each rescue.
Is this true?
VERDICT:
TRUE
This is actually true, and it happened in Paris in 1908; the New York Times published an article on it in January of that year with a headline calling the dog in question a “fake hero” for its antics.
It was reported by a correspondent at the time that this happened after a father gave a Newfoundland dog a steak after his child was rescued from the River Seine on the outskirts of Paris.
“Up to this point there was nothing extraordinary – but rescues became more and more frequent. Hardly a day passed when some unfortunate infant was brought safely by the dog after an involuntary bath,” wrote the correspondent in the article.
It was then added that people began suspecting that a mysterious criminal was behind the spate of children being pushed into the Seine.
“Then the truth came out. It was the dog – the noble life-saver himself – that was the guilty one. Whenever he saw a child playing at the edge of the stream, he promptly knocked them into the water and none the less promptly jumped to the rescue.
"He had thus established for himself a profitable source of revenue,” wrote the correspondent.
SOURCE:
https://gwern.net/doc/history/
