Subject: Puppy eats £400 in notes family had saved for holiday

Mischievous puppy Murphy was in the doghouse after wolfing down £400 cash his owners had saved to spend during a family holiday.

Donnah Dear and Ben Lawson were packing for the four-day trip to Spain with their two sons when the notes vanished.

Mum Donnah, 37, said: “We left the money on the kitchen counter and it just disappeared. There wasn’t a trace of it, not a corner of a note or anything.”

She and Ben, 36, who run an estate agent business, searched their home in Bury St Edmunds, Suffolk, but found nothing.

Donnah added: “We realised Murphy must have eaten it. We thought, ‘Oh, no, we are going on holiday with no money’.

“But it didn’t ruin our trip. We managed to get enough money together.”

And to prove this is no shaggy dog story – there was a sting in the tail for seven-month old Murphy.

While Donnah, Ben, six-year-old Toby and Oliver, three, flew off to Torremolinos on the Costa del Sol he stayed behind with the boys’ gran Jill Lawson.

And most of the money passed intact through the naughty pup.

Donnah said: “As we queued to get on the plane, we heard Jill had got £300 back. By the time we returned, it was £375.

“We took the money to Barclays. Though the notes had been chewed and stuck together, they put the money in our account which was really good of them.”

Unfortunately, Murphy did not learn his lesson. Days after eating the holiday cash in March, he had to have an emergency operation when he swallowed a sock.

Donnah added: “Murphy will be our first and last dog. He eats everything and we aren’t sure what to do about it.”