Children Accidentally Dialed 911. The Responding Officer Shot the Family's Labrador in the Head.

It began with children playing with a telephone. In August 2017, kids in a Marinette, Wisconsin, household were playing with the home phone and accidentally dialed 911. What follows a call like that is one of the gentlest tasks in policing: an officer stops by to confirm no one needs help. There was no emergency, no suspect, no crime — a check on a misdial.

Remington was the family's chocolate Labrador retriever, three and a half years old. When the officer came to check on the call, Remington walked out to greet him. A neighbor who watched it happen said the dog was not attacking. The officer shot Remington in the head.

The bullet came to rest near his ribs. Remington survived — a Labrador who absorbed a gunshot to the head during a check occasioned by children playing with a phone, and lived.

Two accounts exist. The neighbor — a third party, watching from outside the family — said Remington was not attacking. The Marinette Police Department said the dog attacked the officer. Those accounts cannot both be true, and the record contains no video or finding that resolves them; each stands as stated.

Surviving was expensive. Saving Remington cost roughly $5,000 in veterinary bills — the price of repairing what the officer's bullet did.

The Marinette Police Department's accounting came in two parts. First, an internal review, from which no findings and no discipline were ever reported. Second, a decision about the money: the department refused to pay the roughly $5,000 vet bill, on the stated ground that the dog had attacked the officer. The department's position on the disputed facts, in other words, doubled as its reason for leaving the costs with the family.

So the ledger of one accidental 911 call reads like this: the family absorbed a wounded dog and a $5,000 bill; Remington absorbed a bullet that entered his head and stopped near his ribs; the officer — never publicly named — absorbed no reported consequence; and the department whose officer shot a Labrador in the head during a check on a misdialed phone paid nothing, disciplined no one on the record, and declared the dog the aggressor.