The army has confirmed that a grenade found at a property in Gisborne on Tuesday was a World War I practice grenade.
A Te Hapara man, Sean McDermott, arrived home at lunchtime to find his dog had dug a strange, brown object out of his backyard.
As he cleaned it up, he realised it was an unexploded grenade.
A munitions expert from Trentham army camp collected the grenade that evening night, and the army says the grenade is a dummy and quite safe.
Mr McDermott says the grenade dates from about 1910 to 1920 and was probably kept by a soldier of the time as a souvenir.
He is reportedly going to keep it.
