What was claimed
A Facebook user has found a missing or injured dog.
Our verdict
Several of these posts use images of a dog which featured in a news report in 2021, while others use the same text, but with different images.
Appeals about injured and lost dogs are fake
21 December 2022
A number of Facebook posts claiming to have found a missing or injured dog are fake.
Several versions of these posts, many using the same photos or text, with a different location, have been circulating on local Facebook buy and sell groups in recent weeks.
One of the posts reads: “Hi all, I’m desperately trying to find the owner of this sweet girl I picked up about half an hour ago along side road in #Burton
“She’s hurt on her left leg,tried giving her food but she refused [...] Please help bump this post so she can be reunited with her parents.[sic]”
Other versions of the post featuring the same text, but with the location changed, have been shared to groups in Withernsea (East Yorkshire), Failsworth (Greater Manchester) and Chesterfield (Derbyshire), to name a few.
Several of these posts use images of a dog we’ve written about before: a male spaniel called Pogo who featured in a 2021 news article after covering his paws in red hair dye and frightening his owners.
Another post shared to a group in Woodley (Berkshire) uses the same text, but with a different image of a German shepherd puppy called Charlie, whose photo was shared earlier this month by a Twitter account called German Shepherds of America.
Image courtesy of Austin Kirk
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 several of these posts use images of a dog which featured in a news report in 2021, while others use the same text, but with different images.