Dog swallows diamond from £18,000 heirloom ring

Trainee police dog Jack swallowed the diamond after chewing the ring

A woman had the diamond from her £18,000 ring eaten by a trainee police dog - but recovered it two days later, on Christmas Day.

Jack chewed up Angie Collins's wedding ring and swallowed the diamond.

It took Mrs Collins, who looks after police puppies being trained, two days of waiting and sieving Jack's faeces before the diamond appeared.

Mrs Collins, 51, from Exmouth in Devon, said: "I thought it was futile. But the sun was shining, and there it was."

She had left her ring, a family heirloom, on a side table on 23 December.

Mangled mess

"It must have winked at him," she said. "I went to the kitchen, came back and it was gone."

The ring will be reset and insured "as fast as possible", said Mrs Collins

The ring was a mangled mess on the floor but the diamond was nowhere to be found, despite a frantic search by Mrs Collins and husband Graham.

"My husband and I emptied the entire room bit by bit which took hours. I could only conclude that Jack had eaten it," she said.

"The vet said because a dog's stomach is so intricate it was unlikely I would get it back."

But she was undeterred.

"As a dog walker you always keep your pet's 'poop' in a bag so I took it home and sprayed it with the hose pipe and sieved it every single day - four times a day at least, Mrs Collins said.

She said she found the ring in the the third lot of dog mess she looked through on Christmas Day.

"I had almost given up, so it was the last shot," said Mrs Collins who has been walking police dogs for 18 years.

"I have never had a dog like that. I'm going to get [the ring] reset and insured as fast as possible."