Barni often takes toys away from other dogs and takes them home - but this was a first. Photo / Supplied
A dog bit more than he could chew during a routine beach walk, when he found a rather unusual, and X-rated, toy.
Barni was having a walk on his local Mt Maunganui beach yesterday when he picked up a dildo.
He was so keen on the sex toy he refused to let it go.
Barni's owner James O'Connor asked his friends to take his dog for a walk while he and his partner were in hospital for the birth of their daughter.
Out of the blue, he received photos of Barni and his latest find.
"We just couldn't stop laughing," O'Connor said.
"Our good friends took Barni for a walk with their dog Ted, they had said Barni stole it off another dog and just enjoyed it all to himself.
"It took a bit of convincing but they eventually pulled it off him."
Barni, a 2-year-old rescue dog, has a bit of a habit of taking toys away from other dogs and taking them home - but he had never turned up at home with an X-rated toy before.
O'Connor posted on the local Facebook group about his dog's beach bounty and his post had more than 1,600 reactions in just three hours and hundreds of people commenting.
People found it hilarious that the canine had found such a toy on the beach and many jokingly tagged their friends asking if they'd lost anything.
"I'm glad a dog found it and not a child," one person commented.
"That won't be going in the toy library," someone else said.
O'Connor, who's been in hospital for the last day since welcoming the couple's baby girl, is not sure what happened to the sex toy but - finders, keepers - he says if Barni took it home, he gets to keep it.
"It will be his next toy I guess."
They left for a specific reason. But it could pave the way for more to follow.