This dog was nearly robot lunch.
Megan Dunavant of Ballwin, Missouri, was cleaning her house recently when Stonewall, her senior Shih Tzu, was partially consumed by her robotic vacuum cleaner — and required police assistance to be freed.
The 14-pound pup’s name matches his personality, which Dunavant says was largely at fault for the situation: He barely moves.
“You could be walking towards him, and he’ll still sit there — he’s not going to go anywhere,” Dunavant, 34, tells NBC affiliate KSDK-TV.
Plus, unlike most dogs, Stonewall isn’t skittish about vacuums.
Dunavant was doing some household chores Friday afternoon when she noticed her Bobsweep Pet Hair robotic vacuum had shut off next to Stonewall.
She bent down to turn it back on when Stonewall whimpered at her, and she realized what had happened.
“I was like, ‘Oh no, you’re in it,’ ” she says.
The vacuum had sucked up Stonewall’s long, bushy tail.
The pup attempted to “alligator roll” himself loose, Dunavant says, but to no avail. Between her increasingly panicked dog and being alone at home with a newborn, Dunavant decided she needed backup — and called 911.
“This is awful, this is like something in a movie. You can’t make this up,” she recalls thinking.
Cops quickly responded to the unique emergency.
“This is a first for that,” says Ballwin Police Officer Scott Stephens, one of the two responding officers who helped free Stonewall. “Everyday life throws some wild wrenches at people.”
Liberating Stonewall from the robot required teamwork.
“It was kind of like a 1, 2, 3, he’s covered, you flip this over and take the flashlight,” says Dunavant.
Turns out only the hair of Stonewall’s tail was tangled in the device — so one cop gave the canine a quick haircut, and snipped him loose.
To avoid the situation repeating itself, Stonewall is no longer allowed out at the same time as the floor-sweeping bot.
“I don’t want to have to call 911 again, to get him out of the vacuum cleaner,” says Dunavant with a laugh.







