When dispatchers receive a 911 call, they realize that time is of the essence and can mean the difference between life and death. When 911 dispatchers in Lakeville, Minnesota received 16 calls in the span of 30 minutes, they feared the worst. Surely was an emergency, but as it turned out, that was far from the case.

Dispatchers receive a puzzling series of 911 calls

After receiving the 911 calls, authorities were stumped as to what the actual emergency was. All they could hear on the calls were barking in the background. The police sent some officers to investigate the calls, which were all coming from the same number.

Police investigate the calls

Arriving at the residence, officers were prepared for anything. Oddly enough, the home was empty. It was at this point that Officer Michelle Roberts reach out to the homeowner. Her goal was to gain access to the property to see who exactly was placing the calls.

Two dogs had been calling 911… repeatedly

The officers were shocked to find the only living things in the home the owner’s dogs, who had been left alone at home while the owner was at work. The owner had also left a phone, set to “emergency calls only” in his upstairs office. It was from that phone that the dogs had been placing the calls.

And while you can’t really blame the dogs, who were just playing with the phone, calling 911 unnecessarily can have dire consequences. When a dispatcher is on the phone with a non-emergency call, they might miss a call for an actual emergency. It is also illegal to call 911 when it is not an emergency.

Learning a valuable lesson

Hopefully, the dogs’ owner learned a valuable lesson about leaving a phone lying around that his dogs would have easy access to. Granted, no one would expect a pair of canines to be able to make a single 911 call, let alone 16 of them. In the future, the owner will probably keep any phones out of the dogs’ reach.

Making their job a little more fun for one night

The incident probably also gives the police officers something hilarious to talk with their coworkers about down at the police station. Look at it this way, the dogs made the officers’ jobs a little less boring for at least one night.

“Our assumption is the dogs were having a rough day and it was the dogs that were seeking assistance through 911,” Officer Roberts joked in a video on the story.

No charges were pressed against the dogs’ owner. As for the dogs, chances are they did end up getting a warning as well as a couple of pats and belly rubs thrown in for good measure.

Find out more about this story in the video below.

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Sources: YouTube – FOX 9 Minneapolis-St. Paul, The Animal Rescue Site