[wordup] Re: Japanese fleeced in poodle scam

[Adam Shand]

Doh ... busted by John.  That'll teach me for believing Australian  
news papers.

Via: John <jcw at oraclegeek...>
Source: http://www.snopes.com/critters/lurkers/poodlesheep.asp

This tale of dog lovers in Japan taken by swindlers who "imported  
entire flocks of sheep from the UK and Australia" and sold them as  
poodles hit the news in April 2007 when it was published in some UK  
newspapers (including the Metro and the Sun) known for their not  
infrequent detours into the fantastic. Many readers spotted its  
remarkable similarity to the hoary "Mexican Pet" urban legend, in  
which unsuspecting tourists traveling in a foreign country adopt a  
small stray dog, only to discover later that their new pet is  
actually a very large form of rat.

The notion that anyone who had ever seen a dog (which is most  
everyone) could be fooled by sheep proffered as poodles is as  
implausible (if not more so) as the idea that anyone could really  
mistake a rat for a dog. (The claim that "sheep are rare in Japan and  
most people do not know what they look like" is just silly: even  
schoolchildren who have never seen live sheep learn to identify them  
from pictures and drawings and can recognize them as something  
distinctly different than dogs. Certainly the creatures' bleating  
instead of barking and having hooves in place of paws are some basic,  
easily recognized clues.) And in this case the tale is not something  
that supposedly happened to the indefinite "some tourist" in "a  
foreign country," but to thousands of Japanese in their homeland,  
people who were reportedly shelling out the equivalent of $1,600 per  
sheep-dog before anyone caught on to the scam and blew the whistle.

Aside from its basic implausibility, a number of other details toll  
the death knell for this version of the legend:
This astounding story seems to have completely escaped the notice of  
the news media in Japan (where it should be receiving the greatest  
amount of coverage), and police in Sapporo say they have not heard of  
the scam.

The company identified as the outfit behind the sheep-as-poodles  
swindle, Poodles As Pets, doesn't seem to exist in Sapporo (or  
anywhere else in Japan).

As Cerebral Soup! points out, the very same story was posted as a  
blog entry (in Japanese) back in February 2006.

Cerebral Soup! also noted it wasn't the case that, as claimed in the  
English-language articles, "Japanese moviestar Maiko Kawamaki [sic]  
went on a talk-show and wondered why her new pet would not bark or  
eat dog food." Actually, Ms. Kawakami appeared on a Japanese  
television show (Gokigenyou) and merely said that she had heard a  
story about someone else's being sold a sheep as a poodle.

All in all, this was yet another case of an urban legend's being  
recycled by a few news sources who weren't afraid of letting the  
truth get in the way of a good story.