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The family could not pay its debts, so their German town council went looking for assets to seize.

Officials, armed with a search warrant, found a laptop, a coffee machine and the wheelchair of one family member, according to reporting from the German publication Die Glocke.

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tap here to see other videos from our team. Try refreshing your browser, or A family couldn't pay the bills, so the city took their dog and sold it on eBay Back to video

Most valuable of all, though, was the family’s beloved pet — Edda the pug.

The 1-year-old female dog was valuable to the family, of course, because she had provided comfort in trying times, they told local media. But she was valuable to town officials, too, because Edda was a purebred. So authorities from Ahlen, a town 25 miles southwest of Munster, seized the pug and assessed her value at $850.

Then they listed her for sale on eBay.

More than 100 miles away, a police officer saw the listing, and though she was skeptical about how the city had come to possess the dog, decided to make Edda her new pet.

Ahlen town treasurer Dirk Schlebes told German wire service dpa that Edda sold for a “slightly lower price” than listed. “The money went into the town coffers,” Schlebes said. Edda’s original owners had failed to pay money it owed the town, reported the Associated Press, including a so-called dog tax.