You can spend 300k on dog jewelry?

There are things we remember from working at daily newspapers. We remember reporters shouting out bad puns for hours. We’d lay down money that when this story broke, at least one guy at the Rocky Mountain News suggested some variation of “Barking Up the Wrong Tree” for the headline while his co-workers politely ignored him. We’ll try to resist making such whoopee cushion jokes for the next few paragraphs, but we make no promises.

As the story goes, an unidentified 64-year-old KCK businessman was in Denver last week at the Rocky Mountain Cluster Dog Show. He claims he was traveling with three “tubs” of pet jewelry and a handgun in a briefcase.

The businessman told police he’d stopped at a Starbucks and was walking back to his car when three men in masks with guns drawn jumped him. They made off with his “tubs” filled with jewel encrusted dog jewelry, allegedly valued at $300,000. They took his gun, too. Nobody saw any of this except the businessman. We don’t envy the agent working on the insurance claim.

OK, damn it, we can’t help ourselves. It doesn’t count if the pun comes from a quote in the story that we didn’t write. Right? The cop on the scene said, “We can’t just say that it seems kind of far-fetched.”

Shut up.