Family dog chews on live grenade all morning before anyone realizes

A man in northeastern Thailand came home to find the rusty ball his dog had been gnawing on was a live Chinese-made grenade, pin still in place.

The grenade turned up at a house in Ban Phak Khaya Noi, a village in Bok Subdistrict of Non Khun District on July 10, according to a statement from the Sisaket Provincial Public Relations Office published by Bangkok radio station Sor Wor Por FM91.

The homeowner, Rungnapa Duangta, had returned from a hospital visit and was resting on his porch when he noticed a rusty round object nearby.

He picked it up, saw what looked like a grenade pin, and moved it outside before asking an elderly relative indoors where it had come from.

The family dog had been carrying the object around and playing with it since that morning, he was told. Everyone had assumed it was a bone or a scrap of plastic.

A family dog which carried a live grenade into a home in Thailand. Photo courtesy of the Sisaket Provincial Public Relations Office

The village head alerted district chief Chaiwat Thammawat, who came to the property with police.

Officers identified the device as a Type 82-2 fragmentation hand grenade manufactured in China. The casing was heavily rusted, but its key mechanisms were intact and it could still have exploded if the pin was pulled or it took a hard enough impact, The Thaiger reported.

Bomb disposal officers carried the grenade to a rice field well away from the village and destroyed it in a controlled explosion. The blast left a crater roughly 30 cm deep and 60 cm wide. Nobody was hurt and no property was damaged.

The family had no idea what the dog had brought home, Khaosod English reported. "If the dog had pulled the pin or dropped it hard enough, I can't imagine what might have happened," the homeowner was quoted as saying.

Thammawat called the case an important warning to the public, particularly in areas where old military ordnance may still be lying around, according to Khaosod English. He urged anyone who comes across suspected explosives, ammunition or military hardware not to touch or move it, and to call community leaders, police or district officials so trained specialists can recover it.