The former mayor of Alice, Texas, who lost her job after trying to trick a neighbor out of her dog, has settled her criminal case.

Grace Saenz-Lopez, who was asked by neighbors to care for their dog Puddles while they were away, told them upon their return that the Shih Tzu had died, and that she buried it in her back yard.

In reality, Saenz-Lopez and her sister had hidden the dog, which they later said had been neglected by its owners, with intentions of keeping it.

When relatives of the neighbor saw the dog, renamed Panchito, at a grooming business, the jig was up. But Saenz-Lopez, after losing her job, still kept the dog, forcing the original owners to regain custody through a civil suit.

Saenz-Lopez, along with other parties in the long-running legal case, appeared in a fairly awkward segment (above) on NBC's Today Show a while back -- before the dog was returned to the original owners.

Under the terms of a plea agreement approved Tuesday, Saenz-Lopez pleaded no contest to filing a false police report. She was fined $300 and ordered to serve 48 hours of community service and two years of probation, according to an Associated Press story.

Saenz-Lopez had faced two felony counts of tampering with evidence and concealing evidence for hiding the dog with her sister and reporting it as missing.

She insisted that she kept the dog because Puddles/Panchito's previous owner had neglected it. In April, though, a judge ordered the dog returned to the original owner.