--- title: Police Respond to Emergency 999 Call From Heavy Breathing Dog description: The canine stole his owner's phone and managed to dial 999 canonical: https://time.com/63418/999-emergency-call-dog/ author: Samantha Grossman article:opinion: false article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2014-04-15T16:17:11.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-04-13T07:08:48.715Z og:title: Police Respond to Emergency Call from 'Heavy Breather' Who Ends Up Being a Dog og:description: The canine stole his owner's phone and managed to dial 999 og:url: https://time.com/63418/999-emergency-call-dog/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blta4ea3a9b3e368960/69868abe1eebf7b145370679/120185791.jpg?branch=production&width=3840&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 og:image:width: 1200 og:image:height: 675 og:image:alt: Dog phone og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: Police Respond to Emergency Call from 'Heavy Breather' Who Ends Up Being a Dog twitter:description: The canine stole his owner's phone and managed to dial 999 twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blta4ea3a9b3e368960/69868abe1eebf7b145370679/120185791.jpg?branch=production&width=3840&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  # Police Respond to Emergency Call from 'Heavy Breather' Who Ends Up Being a Dog by [Samantha Grossman](https://time.com/author/samantha-grossman/) ## Samantha Grossman Apr 15, 2014 4:17 PM UTC  Communicating CommunicatingGetty Images by [Samantha Grossman](https://time.com/author/samantha-grossman/) ## Samantha Grossman Apr 15, 2014 4:17 PM UTC When authorities in Buckinghamshire, England, received a mysterious 999 call from a heavy breather, they arrived at the scene expecting an emergency, since that’s usually how things work. But there was no emergency, and the heavy-breathing caller turned out to be a dog who’d stolen his owner’s phone, the BBC [reports](http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-beds-bucks-herts-27026260). “Thames Valley Police arrived and said they’d heard heavy breathing and didn’t know what our emergency was,” said the pooch’s owner, Mary Amos-Cole. Apparently, police already knew the dog — a two-year-old Belgian Malinois named Leighton — because he has set off Amos-Cole’s burglar alarm several times by tearing around the house. So clearly he has a crush on one (or several) of the police officers and keeps doing things to try and get them to come around more often. ```json [{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"NewsArticle","@id":"https://time.com/63418/999-emergency-call-dog/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://time.com/63418/999-emergency-call-dog/"},"headline":"Police Respond to Emergency Call from 'Heavy Breather' Who Ends Up Being a Dog","datePublished":"2014-04-15T16:17:11.000Z","dateModified":"2026-04-13T07:08:48.715Z","description":"The canine stole his owner's phone and managed to dial 999","url":"https://time.com/63418/999-emergency-call-dog/","keywords":["Newsfeed","animals","Dogs","police","england","uk"],"thumbnailUrl":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blta4ea3a9b3e368960/69868abe1eebf7b145370679/120185791.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","author":[{"@type":"Person","name":"Samantha Grossman","jobTitle":null,"url":"https://time.com/author/samantha-grossman/"}],"articleSection":"","image":[{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blta4ea3a9b3e368960/69868abe1eebf7b145370679/120185791.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","width":1200,"height":675,"headline":"Dog phone","caption":"Dog phone","creditText":"Getty Images","representativeOfPage":true}],"publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"Time","url":"https://time.com/","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://time.com/images/logo.png","width":528,"height":156},"foundingDate":"March 3, 1923","sameAs":["https://www.facebook.com/time","https://www.instagram.com/time/?hl=en","https://twitter.com/time","https://www.pinterest.com/timemagazine"]}},{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"item":{"@id":"/tag/time-section-newsfeed/","name":"Newsfeed"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"item":{"@id":"https://time.com/63418/999-emergency-call-dog/","name":"Police Respond to Emergency Call from 'Heavy Breather' Who Ends Up Being a Dog"}}]}] ```