Calgary man has ruff day after dog makes online purchases

When it's too quiet, David Murphy has come to realize his puppy, Zoey, is likely up to no good.

He works from home, and last week, it was a bit too silent for his liking. He went to check on the one-year-old dog, and lo and behold, she had a PlayStation controller tucked between her front paws, gnawing away at it.

Buttons gone, controller ripped apart — Murphy says he scolded himself for leaving the device within Zoey's reach, and then went back to work.

"I go back to my desk and I get these email alerts start popping up," he said in an interview on the Calgary Eyeopener.

"'Thank you for your purchase. Thank you for your purchase.' And I'm like, oh no. I've been hacked."

The correlation didn't hit Murphy right away.

He deleted his credit card and changed his password. He contacted PlayStation directly to find out what was going on.

"They're like, 'Yeah, sir, this was ordered from your console.' They confirmed the serial number, and I'm like, 'This is impossible. It's just me and my dog here.'"

He walked downstairs and turned on the game console. Sure enough, the purchases showed up on his account, ironically, on a game called Watch Dogs.

LISTEN | David Murphy explains how his dog racked up charges on his PlayStation account:

So far, he'd only seen two charges of $8 U.S. each — for clothing add-ons within the game — but he was determined to get to the bottom of the conundrum.

That's when it all … clicked.

"I guess when she was gnawing away at the buttons, she just started purchasing and purchasing," he said.

"I had everything just auto, right? If you just click the X button a number of times, you go right into the store and you're just ordering stuff."

Given the bizarre circumstances, Murphy says PlayStation agreed to refund the purchases. 

He says he'll now be more diligent about storing the controllers. He's also added a complicated password to his account, just in case Zoey goes on another spending spree.

Murphy says this isn't the first time Zoey has done something like this.

In another silent moment in mid-October, he found her with half a Barbie sticking out of her mouth, courtesy of his eight-year-old daughter's toy bin.

After tweeting about the incident, Barbie actually responded.

"I tweeted a picture. I'm like, RIP Barbie. And then Barbie writes back and is like, 'Rumours of my death were greatly exaggerated.' And actually, they sent my daughter a bunch of replacements, so that was pretty kind of them."

The lesson? Make sure things are stored properly, Murphy says. Or the consequence could be costly.

"She's more good than bad, and … we'll get her trained out of this. But it's good for a laugh."