Dogs and other animals are involved in many urban legends in our culture. These are just some from snoops.com which you may find amusing or disgusting.
Taco Bell Dog
The Taco Bell Dog Urban Legend has a couple of versions, one that the dog died (perhaps in the cargo of a plane) and the other that Taco Bell killed the dog off rather than honour the rest of the contract. Both are considered false by snoops.com. The dog, which became a pop icon, went on to star as Bruiser’s mother in Legally Blond 2 and died of natural causes at the ripe old age of 15. As for the cargo of the plane, Gidget (the Taco Bell Dog’s real name) flew 1st class with her handlers on the way to commercial shoots.
The Blind Pilot
The Airline Pilot Takes Seeing Eye Dog for a Walk urban legend is considered false by snoops.com, but it makes a great story. The story goes that during a layover, a pilot asks a blind passenger if he would like him to take his dog for a walk. Shocked passengers nearly faint when they see the pilot, who is wearing sunglasses, get off the plane with the dog.
Cocoa Mulch
The Cocoa Mulch Dog Urban Legend is partly true. The real danger is in theobromine poisoning that according to snoops.com resulted in one known death of a dog but caused panic across North America with a mass fear inducing email. The brand Cocoa Mulch later issued a news release stating they had taken pains to eliminate theobromine from the mulch, but the threat of theobromine poisoning remains real in all kinds of cocoa based sources, especially chocolate.
Hercules
The Hercules Dog Urban Legend is considered false by snoops.com, as you can see from the photos. Here is the email that was circulating at the time along with the photo on the left:
Hercules: The World’s Biggest Dog Ever According to Guinness World Records
Hercules was recently awarded the honorable distinction of Worlds Biggest Dog by Guinness World Records. Hercules is an English Mastiff and has a 38 inch neck and weighs 282 pounds.
With “paws the size of softballs” (reports the Boston Herald), the three-year-old monster is far larger and heavier than his breed’s standard 200lb. limit. Hercules owner Mr. Flynn says that Hercules weight is natural and not induced by a bizarre diet: “I fed him normal food and he just grew”…. and grew. and grew.
So that was the email along with the photo. Guinness did in fact list a world’s heaviest dog named Hercules. However, here is the real picture of powerlifter John Flynn and his 282 lb. English Mastiff. So the story was essentially correct, wrong photo, wrong breed. Someone took the story, photoshoped the picture above inserting the head of a Neapolitan Mastiff, and sent out the email. Note: John Flynn’s dog passed away about six months after this photo.
Your Cheatin’ Dog
The Urban Legend Family Dog Leads Wife to home of Mistress wasn’t really proved nor disproved by snoops.com. The story is that when hubby is sick in bed, his wife takes the dog for a walk and decides to follow where the dog seems to be leading her, which happens to be right to his mistress’s door. Most say the other woman answers in her negligee with a big smile like she’s expecting someone and the dog trots right past her to its waiting food bowl. They note it first seemed to show up in a couple of stories starting in the ’30s. This is priceless, and has an added dimension of a cheating spouse being betrayed by a loyal man’s best friend.
Here Comes the Bride
The speechless wedding guests are mistakenly Show Video of Man Having Sex with Dog urban legend is considered true by snoops.com. A man lent his video recorder to a friend and apparently forgot to erase scenes of himself having sex with a neighbor’s dog. When the wedding guests sat down at the reception and wanted to see a replay of the ceremony, they were instead treated to some rather graphic scenes. A British court did not believe the man’s claim that he was trying to show some trick photography to some friends.
The Choking Doberman
The Choking Doberman Urban Legend was so famous it was taken as title for a book about urban legends. Snoops.com notes it seemed to show up all over the place about 1981 and they were never able to verify it. The basis of it is that a woman leaves her choking Doberman at the vet and then after she gets home receives a call to get out of the house immediately–human fingers were found in the dog’s throat. It has a few versions, sometimes with the perpetrator being found inside, usually with the large aggressive breed changing with the times protecting a single woman living alone.
St. Bernard Dogs as Food
This one was upsetting to read and to write about. The St. Bernard dogs are being raised for food in China urban legend is considered true by snoops.com, although much of the more gruesome information was hard to verify. Originally coming to light in 2001, in 2011 this also plays into the resentment towards globalization and our Western ideas about dogs as food which is accepted by some Asian cultures. As snoops.com points out, this deals with a particular species being used as food, rather than the humane treatment of any animal that is raised for meat. Logic aside, this one is pretty high up there on the yuk factor.
I Buy Strays
The I Buy Strays Urban Legend claims to take that pet off your hands for cash and sell it for medical or cosmetic purposes. It is totally false according to snoops.com, and the owner of the site says the site is mainly about satire. Even PETA has a notice to that effect after they were deluged with complaints. The site and ads almost went viral after ads were anonymously placed on Craigslist:
I Buy Stray Dogs and Cats
Reply to: ibuystrays@gmail.com
Date: 2007-12-28, 3:33PM EST
Do you have one too many cats? Or maybe a litter of unwanted puppies? I can help you out and put a little money in your pocket.
http://IBuyStrays.com
Location: Georgia
…after which people would go to the website and become outraged. The registered domain name ibuystrays.com and the professional looking website make the site seem authentic. The website is simply put together with stock photos of google images and made up copy. This one is kinda sick to read but it is an example of stuff that is simply not true and sometimes even done for a prank or other reasons.
Puppy Profits
Another sick example of someone trying to wind you up. Puppy Profits is a total hoax and considered not true by snoops.com who point out that it is a cookie cutter recipe for creating an email or facebook hoax. Complete with a domain name, products to buy, and testimonials such as “My basement isn’t even that big, and I still made over $2,000 on my very first event. Thank you Puppy Profits!”
This page on snoops.com also gives some good hints at recognizing questionable wind-you-up sites. The well done, convincing website by Puppy Profits goes to great lengths to convince you of their seriousness with products such as shown below. It’s all a sham.
And if you order now you will also receive, free of charge, software to track fights on the big money dog fighting network and doggy condoms. Unbelievable.
“Lucky” the 23rd Psalm Dog
A seeing eye dog named Lucky leads four of his owners to their deaths. At least, that’s the story that showed up on the internet about 1997 and attributed to an Europa Times story in 1993. Rather than tell you about it, here it is in its entirety:
“We will not have him put down. Lucky is basically a damn good guide dog,” Ernst Gerber, a dog trainer from Wuppertal told reporters. “He just needs a little brush-up on some elementary skills, that’s all.”
Gerber admitted to the press conference that Lucky, a German shepherd guide-dog for the blind, had so far been responsible for the deaths of all four of his previous owners. “I admit it’s not an impressive record on paper. He led his first owner in front of a bus, and the second off the end of a pier. He actually pushed his third owner off a railway platform just as the Cologne to Frankfurt express was approaching and he walked his fourth owner into heavy traffic, before abandoning him and running away to safety. But, apart from epileptic fits, he has a lovely temperament. And guide dogs are difficult to train these days.”
Asked if Lucky’s fifth owner would be told about his previous record, Gerber replied: “No. It would make them nervous, and would make Lucky nervous. And when Lucky gets nervous he’s liable to do something silly.”
Believe it or not, snoops.com pretty well puts this story to rest. They also point out the similarities to other stories that seek to make Germany or Germans the butt end of jokes such as Gunther Burpus, the man who gets stuck in the cat door, or Frederic Briefed, the “heartbreaking tale of constipation and tragedy” of an overzealous German zookeeper who tries to give an elephant an enema.
The Mexican Pet
Like The Choking Doberman, The Mexican Pet urban legend was so famous that it had a book named after it and a club act as well. The most common version is that a woman traveling to Mexico brings back what she thinks is a dog, takes it to a vet when it appears ill, only to be told it is not a dog at all but a Mexican sewer rat. It is assumed the single woman thought she was rescuing or bringing back (perhaps illegally) a Mexican Hairless or Chihuahua breed. The disturbing photo below which is actually a sculpture plays into the urban legend as well.
The story circulates with different versions and frequency and plays upon our distrust of foreign countries and cultures. It is almost always a single woman who is the victim, trying to befriend a small but foreign animal. The story increases in frequency with people being the victims of globalization and factories shutting down and moving to Mexico or some other country. Moral of the story is don’t bring foreign things into our country (animals, food, cars) and you can’t trust foreigners. Don’t ‘contaminate’ the Homeland. Or else you might wind up eating deep fried sewer rat.
Cathouse for Dogs
Hook, line, and sinker. That’s how prankster and media lampoon artist Joey Skaggs put it about the Cathouse for Dogs prank that in 1976 took in the media, law enforcement, and the public. According to the story from Skaggs’s website:
“Cat House for Dogs,” said an ad in the Village Voice, “featuring a savory selection of hot bitches…” Along with this ad, a press release was sent to the media saying that if your dog graduated from obedience school, if it was his birthday, or if he was just horny, for $50 you could get your dog sexually gratified. This was not a breeding service, but purely a sexual pleasure service.
The phone rang off the hook as hundreds of people called to talk to New York’s first and only dog pimp. Surprisingly, not only were the calls from bona fide customers willing to pay $50, but there were just as many calls from people who wanted to have sex with dogs or watch dogs have sex with other people. Dog pimp, Skaggs, recorded all of these incoming phone calls.
When contacted by the news media, Skaggs got together 25 actors and 15 dogs and staged an elaborate performance in a SoHo loft — a night in a bordello for dogs. The performance featured models posing with female dogs in look-a-like outfits, and actors posing with the male dogs waiting to view the bitches. A friend played a bogus veterinarian on site who, when interviewed, explained that the female dogs were injected with a drug called Estro-dial to artificially induce a state of heat. If a bitch was already in a natural state of heat, she would be given a contraceptive called Ova-ban, so there would be no fear of fatherhood.
A lecture was given on dog copulation techniques and customers filled out questionnaires about their male dog’s age, medical history, and bitch preferences and hostesses served cocktails. A staff photographer was there to take a token photo of each dog getting it on, and a dog groomer to primp the dogs before and after sex.”
Now here’s where it really passes into the Twilight Zone: Among the media who were contacted or became interested was Midnite Blue, New York’s first late night cable TV sex show who sent out a video crew. The resulting publicity caused even more media attention and public outrage. When WABC called and wanted to do a documentary, Skaggs refused, claiming he had been forced underground, and instead referred them to Midnite Blue who already had footage (he didn’t want to hire all the actors again). By this time Midnite Blue had been told of the hoax, and “gleefully” went along with the ruse. WABC produced the documentary (which was later nominated an Emmy for “Best News Broadcast of the Year”) and it poured gasoline on a firestorm of outrage. From Skaggs’s website:
“The WABC TV piece aired, painting proprietor Skaggs as a sleaze-bag dog pimp exploiting innocent dogs for money. This helped to enflame more authorities, including the ASPCA, the Bureau of Animal Affairs, the NYPD vice squad, the Mayor’s office, and various religious and humane organizations, who were thus compelled to send out a drag net to bring down the dog whoremaster of Greenwich Village.”
Impossible to ignore now, political pressure exploded from all sides after the documentary and a subpoena was finally issued to Skaggs, who then held a press conference announcing it was all a hoax and appeared in court. But WABC refused to retract the story, its precious Emmy award now threatened (it was later disqualified). In the end, WABC never did retract the story, and people to this day believe there is a Cathouse for Dogs in Soho.
Ticked Off
The claim that a cotton ball with liquid soap on it and applied to a tick will cause it to simply release into the cotton ball is considered false by snoops.com. This is one of the most disappointing emails that many of us have received who are dealing with this pest, and the letdown in finding it listed on snoops.com as misleading information is hard to describe. Upon checking on it further, we find that it may indeed cause the tick to drop off, but that it is more likely to cause the tick to regurgitate the rather deadly cocktail of toxins into the animal’s body. This from thepoodleanddogblog pretty well sums up most of the research:
“Although the liquid soap method of removing ticks does make them drop off, it also may stimulate them to release saliva which may contain harmful diseases that ticks are known to carry.”
For any of you who have had an anxious night with a dog that appeared to be on death’s door after a botched tick removal squeezed toxins back into the dog, you know that the toxins are to be taken seriously.
Tick Removal – from the CDC
The above images are from the Centers for Disease Control/tick removal page on removing ticks. They emphasize removing the tick quickly without squeezing it and forcing toxins into the animal’s (or your) body. From the CDC:
Whether the email containing the urban legend is well meaning info sharing or an outright hoax, or both, is hard to determine. Do your own research.
Amused or horrified, these dog urban legends are just some of the ones listed on snoops.com. Their research is considerable. You may also be interested in our Top 25 Urban Legends page.
