A dog ate $4,000. The owners recovered the cash in a pretty disgusting way: 'It smelled so bad.'

• A Goldendoodle called Cecil ate $4,000 in cash lying on a couple's kitchen counter.
• The owners had to retrieve the shredded bills from the dog's poop and vomit.

After a dog ate about $4,000 in cash, the Pennsylvania-based owners resorted to recovering the money in a pretty disgusting way.

The Guardian reported that Cecil, a seven-year-old Goldendoodle, ate a bunch of $50 and $100 bills put on the kitchen counter in the Pittsburgh home of Clayton and Carrie Law.

The money, withdrawn from the couple's savings account, was earmarked for a fence installation and was meant to be stashed away, according to The Washington Post.

Expressing her disbelief, Carrie Law told the Pittsburgh City Paper: "This dog, I swear to God, has never touched anything in his life."

However, last month, that all changed. She said: "Suddenly Clayton yelled to me, 'Cecil's eating $4,000!!!!!' I thought, 'I cannot be hearing that.' I almost had a heart attack."

The couple discovered chewed-up bills scattered throughout their home. Though they were able to recover about $1,500, that was less than half the sum they'd withdrawn, the Post reported.

The Laws called the veterinarian to see if Cecil should be checked out after eating the stack of cash, but were reassured that given the dog's size, at-home monitoring would suffice, the newspaper reported.

The next challenge was working out what to do about the missing money.

Carrie Law said she called the bank, where the manager said similar incidents had happened in the past, and that they would take back taped-together bills with visible serial numbers, according to The Post.

Cecil later threw up some of the ingested money, which the couple started to piece together, but the Laws also had to retrieve cash from the dog's other end.

A video they shared on Instagram shows Clayton Law collecting poop from the garden, before washing it out in a sink.

"There we are at the utility sink, washing this shitty money, yelling 'Yay! Yes! We got one!' It smelled so bad," she told the City Paper.

Carrie Law told The Post: "I never thought I'd be able to say I've laundered money, but there is apparently a first time for everything."

The couple then pieced together the notes like a jigsaw puzzle, the video shows.

The Post reported that, remarkably, the couple salvaged about $3,550 in total, meaning they only lost about $450.

The couple told told the Post they plan to create an artwork with the remaining shreds of bills they couldn't fully piece together.