And to think, when we adopted him, he was living under a porch in WV

During a brief dip into a communications major at University, I took a required class in public speaking. Aside from a childhood lisp that comes back when I get nervous or tired, the course didn’t require too much effort. For an assignment on persuasive arguments, I chose to attack the War of Drugs and label it a failure.

As part of the presentation, I used an oft forwarded email about an American family who had their child kidnapped during a trip into Mexico. The child was killed, gutted, filled with cocaine and then brought back across the border. The story, of course I found out later, was an urban myth.

But today I came across this, from a DEA press release.

New York, NY) - The Drug Enforcement Administration's (DEA) New York Field Division, Special Agent-in-Charge, JOHN P. GILBRIDE announced the arrests of 22 Colombian nationals who were responsible for smuggling over 20 kilograms of heroin into the United States. The Colombian organization used varied and unique concealment methods.

Human couriers, termed "swallowers", ingested the heroin packets for transporting. Animal couriers were pure-bred puppies that had heroin packets surgically implanted in them. In one instance, six puppies were found impregnated with a total of three kilograms of liquid heroin packets.

THEY HAD SEWN PACKETS OF LIQUID HEROIN IN THE STOMACHS OF DOGS! PUPPY DOGS! AHHHHH!!! WTF!?1!

And to prove this ain't no urban myth...



The press release doesn't actually say anything about the current condition of the dogs but it seems that they're alright. In fact, since the brown one there is happily chewing on the chair leg he's a least as healthy as our dumb mutt.

I showed the story to our dog, who does nothing but sleep all day and destroy our furniture, and explained to him that some dogs actually have jobs. I told him there are the good drug-sniffing dogs and there were bad drug-smuggling dogs, but either way they went to work each day and earned their keep. He couldn’t freeload all day long and play PSP and eat giant bowls of Science Diet dinner.

But at the mention of the word “dinner” the whole conversation fell apart and he wouldn’t stop barking until I filled his bowl. We never should have let him move back home after college.