When we were kids (dating myself here), my friend had a TV with a remote control back when almost nobody had a TV with a remote. You would push the channel-change button on it and the channel knob (!!!) on the TV would mechanically turn and the channel would change. Well, apparently, the remote used an almost-audible high frequency to signal a channel change and when his dog ran through the living room, the dog's tag…
An elderly lady with several pets called the operator to say that her telephone failed to ring when her friends called; and that when it did ring, her dog usually barked first. The engineer went to investigate.
He climbed a telephone pole next to the house, connected his test set, and rang the line to subscriber's house. The phone didn't ring, but the dog barked loudly. He tried again, now the phone rang.
Climbing down from the pole, the engineer found:
- This was in a country where the ringing was done from one of the wires against ground (not across the pair) (I think it was England).
- A dog was tied to the telephone system's ground post via an iron chain and collar.
- The ground post was in dry, poorly conducting ground.
- The dog was receiving >50 V of ringing voltage when the phone rang.
- With this torturous treatment, the dog would start barking and urinating on the ground.
- The wet ground now completed the circuit and the phone would ring.
OK, this story has a definite "urban legend" ring to it. Mythbusters wouldn't have tested it with a real dog, I guess.