A COCKER spaniel is in the doghouse after dialling 999.
Police officers raced to a B&B business in Blairgowrie, Perthshire, on Tuesday evening after getting a silent emergency call.
It turned out a one-year-old pooch called Cino had been playing with the wireless handset and had somehow dialled the emergency numbers.
His owner, Jillian Merrouche, was startled when two officers suddenly knocked on the front door of her business.
After confirming that there were no children in the house who may have dialled the number, she realised that the house phone had been left outside.
She eventually found her cheeky pooch playing in the back garden – with the handset in his mouth.
Jillian, 46, said: “I don’t know how me managed to click in the numbers, but he did.
“I had left the phone on a ledge in the garden and he must have got hold of it and was playing with it.
“Suddenly I had the police on my door saying that they had a call from my house number before the line went dead.
“They asked if I had any children in the house who could have accidentally made the call, and then I realised that I had left the phone outside.
“I was a bit embarrassed by it – I hope the police saw the funny side.
“He’s just a mad cocker spaniel, he’s only young.”
She took to social media to speak of her “mortification” about what happened.
She wrote: “Major mortification. Dog had got the phone and somehow dialled 999. Police came round to check all was well. True story. #the shame”
She added that one of her daughter’s had done the same thing when she was little, but said it was “good on the police” for checking up.
“It’s reassuring they come round to check on you,” she added.
A spokeswoman for Police Scotland said: “We received a call, enquiries were made and all was in order.”
Cocker spaniels are notorious for misbehaving, and have a habit for chewing on household items.
A spaniel in North Yorkshire was dubbed “the naughtiest dog in Britain” after chewing through wallpaper, power cables, carpets, furnishings and even a laminate kitchen floor.
