The dog – a boxer – was out for a stroll on Sunday with a 40-year-old neighbour and her white German Shepherd in the Neandertal valley – known for the discovery of the eponymous Neanderthal prehistoric skull specimen found there in 1856.
“The two dogs were playing off leash when the boxer – a normal family dog called Boogie, as in ‘boogie woogie’ – found an object and brought it to the woman,” Erkrath police spokesman Ulrich Löhe said.
The woman immediately recognised the object and commanded the dog to set it down, which Boogie did admirably, though she is not especially well-trained, Löhe added. Meanwhile the woman called police and waited by the grenade so that others wouldn’t be endangered.
Officers from the explosive ordnance disposal unit secured the object at around 6:20 pm and identified it as a live American hand grenade from WWII. They transported it to their headquarters where it will be defused or detonated, Löhe said.
Erkrath, in the rural district of Mettmann in the state of North Rhine-Westphalia, did not have any significant battles during the Second World War, he said. "But many soldiers likely tossed their weapons aside in the area as the war ended and they made their way home," he added.
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