diff --git a/deepspeech/frontend/augmentor/spec_augment.py b/deepspeech/frontend/augmentor/spec_augment.py
index 7c23b628..a9bb043d 100644
--- a/deepspeech/frontend/augmentor/spec_augment.py
+++ b/deepspeech/frontend/augmentor/spec_augment.py
@@ -151,6 +151,9 @@ class SpecAugmentor(AugmentorBase):
             np.ndarray: time warped spectrogram (time, freq)
         """
         window = max_time_warp = self.W
+        if window == 0:
+            return x
+        
         if mode == "PIL":
             t = x.shape[0]
             if t - window <= window:
diff --git a/deepspeech/frontend/utility.py b/deepspeech/frontend/utility.py
index 3d0683b0..72dfc98d 100644
--- a/deepspeech/frontend/utility.py
+++ b/deepspeech/frontend/utility.py
@@ -46,7 +46,7 @@ def load_dict(dict_path: Optional[Text], maskctc=False) -> Optional[List[Text]]:
 
     with open(dict_path, "r") as f:
         dictionary = f.readlines()
-    char_list = [entry.split(" ")[0] for entry in dictionary]
+    char_list = [entry.strip().split(" ")[0] for entry in dictionary]
     if BLANK not in char_list:
         char_list.insert(0, BLANK)
     if EOS not in char_list: