In Peru police have arrested a 22-year-old Mexican man named Giussepe Tombolan for attempting to smuggle about 6.6 pounds of cocaine back to his home country inside the bellies of two St. Bernards.

Local police chief Basilio Grossman said the drugs were placed inside the bodies of the large dogs during an operation in a hotel room.

Police veterinarians successfully removed the bags of drugs from the canines.

According to The Associated Press, the dogs were vomiting, had high fevers and suffered as a result of the smuggling attempt with an infection of the abdominal tissue lining.

Giussepe Tombolan arrived in Peru with the dogs several weeks before his arrest.

Although the police chief said this was the first time that Peruvian authorities had ever discovered someone trying to smuggle drugs inside of dogs, this is hardly the first time dogs have been used in the trafficking of narcotics.

In March of 2013, the New York Daily News reported on how about 75 people had been detained across northern Italy and Rome for using dogs as drug mules. The traffickers were feeding dogs, such as Great Danes, Labradors and Mastiffs, bags of cocaine and then slicing up their stomachs when the animals got to their destination.

In 1994 an English sheepdog that had been flown from Colombia with 10 drug packed condoms stuffed inside its stomach was discovered trying to enter New York’s Kennedy Airport.

The grisly news of dogs being used in drug trafficking has even been referenced in an anti-drug ad.

In 2008 FRANK, a U.K. national anti-drug campaign, released a series of informative and satirical TV spots, which featured "Pablo the Drug Mule Dog," who, in one commercial, wakes up in a cellar with a large gash along his chest from which bags of cocaine have been removed and wonders, "What's the big deal about coke?"