Thursday 18 December 2008

Cigarette chewing dog bites the dust


So farewell, then, General Edi.

The cigarette chewing dachsund, who munched his way through half a packet of cigarettes every day since he was a puppy, is no more.

The General was killed after he was hit by a car during a walk to his favourite cigarette shop.

‘Poor Edi dashed out in the road in excitement right in front of a car. There was nothing anyone could do,’ said one neighbour in Graz, central Austria.

The dog’s owner, Wolfgang Treirler, added: ‘His old owner abandoned him and so we took him in 17 years ago, and noticed straight away that he was in the habit of eating cigarettes. He eats the tobacco and the paper, and then chews a while on the filter before spitting it out.

‘On average he eats about 10 cigarettes a day, but all of his teeth are fine.’

A local vet, Harald Mayr, said: ‘Nicotine normally leads to poisoning in dogs, but in this case the animal has obviously become addicted to it which has increased its level of tolerance.’

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