A cocker spaniel was found by the side of the road two weeks ago and its owner still cannot be traced.
There is no evidence this is a real appeal. Near-identical posts have been shared in groups across the country and they closely resemble a number of hoax posts we’ve checked in the past.
Hoax posts claiming that a cocker spaniel has been found by the side of the road have been shared thousands of times in community Facebook groups across the UK.
We have seen versions of the posts in groups based in Brixham (Devon), Shrewsbury (Shropshire), Lancaster (Lancashire), Kettering (Northamptonshire), Stockport (Greater Manchester), Eastbourne (East Sussex), Warrington (Cheshire) and Harrogate (North Yorkshire).
Together, these posts have been shared more than 16,000 times.
The posts all use near-identical wording, which says: “Hello, it’s been 2 weeks and I haven't found the owner of this sweet cocker spaniel we picked up on the road in [location]
“She's really depressed and she's not eating. We took her to the vet she's not chipped. Please bump this post to help me find the owner. [sic]”
They also all use the same image, of a brown spaniel wrapped in an orange towel. Full Fact has been unable to trace the original image, but it appears to have been taken in a stable yard.
There are several signs that this is not a real appeal. Most obviously, it’s impossible that the same dog could have been found at the same time in so many different locations around the country.
Secondly, we have fact checked many similarly false posts in the past which have used almost exactly the same wording about the dog being “really depressed and not eating” alongside a different picture. These posts have also targeted local Facebook groups.
Thirdly, the comments on all the posts have been turned off. This is a common sign that posts like these are hoaxes, as people who are genuinely sharing appeals for information are very unlikely to limit the ways in which they can be contacted.
We have written many times before about other hoax posts, such as reports of missing children, abandoned infants or missing elderly relatives. We have seen instances in which these sorts of posts are edited later to offer housing, links to surveys or other freebies.
Hoaxes like these risk overwhelming social media groups with false information, which can then damage people’s trust in local community news. As a result, genuine posts may be ignored or dismissed as false.
We have written to Meta expressing these concerns and asking the company to take stronger action in response to this problem.
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Image courtesy of Solen Feyissa |
This article is part of our work fact checking potentially false pictures, videos and stories on Facebook. You can read more about this—and find out how to report Facebook content—here. For the purposes of that scheme, we’ve rated this claim as false because there is no evidence the appeal is genuine and it resembles many hoaxes we’ve seen in the past.
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