The Dog Who Kept Pushing Kids Into A River To Acquire Steak Rewards

In 1908 Paris , according to a contemporaneous story from the New York Times , there lived a pawl who was decidedly not a undecomposed male child .

The story begin with a Newfoundland dog that try a child screaming for help after they had fall into the river Seine . The andiron , to its credit , search for the germ of the screaming before diving event into the river and rescuing him , like a ye olde Lassie .

So far , so good . However , according to the level , the trouble began when the dog was rewarded with a courteous big slab of substance , which we ’d still say is more or less a cheap reward for saving a whole human youngster .

Unknowingly – much like the   compound Frenchrewarding people for strikebreaker tails – they had provide motivation for bad behavior . The dog now clear that saving children was a path to gripe , and it did n’t have the moral fortitude to simply wait for them to fall in all by themselves .

A few days later , a second child was play by the Seine when he accrue in too . The same andiron – though noticeably total of kick – jumped back into the river , saving a 2d shaver . Again , the Canis familiaris was gift some meat , reinforcing its hunch .

The pattern of saving , followed by meat , follow by rescues continued for a while . What ’s more , it was a suspicious number of nipper to settle into the Seine over a brief timescale , let alone shoot into account their proximity to one single dog .

It was n’t too long before the gigue was up , and the New York Times ran a scandalous front - Thomas Nelson Page story :   " DOG A FAKE HERO " with the damnatory caption " push kid into the Seine to deliver them and win beefsteaks " .

fit in to the New York Times – and we ’d still take it with a nip of salt – " whenever he saw a playing child on the edge of the flow he promptly rap it into the pee " .

The bounder would then rescue the child , presumptively before nodding at some loose beef the nearest grownup happened to have on them . The dog had learned , like Pavlov ’s hotdog had learned to salivate upon hear a bell , to consort drowning tyke with a gracious big slab of meridian beef cattle .