The Sheep As Fake Poodle Story Evolves!

[stu neville]

Following on from this story in the Strange Crimes thread:

http://www.metro.co.uk/news/article.html?in_article_id=46730&in_page_id=34

Dog owners 'fleeced' in poodle scam
Thursday, April 26, 2007

Thousands of people have been 'fleeced' into buying neatly coiffured lambs they thought were poodles.

Entire flocks of lambs were shipped over from the UK and Australia to Japan by an internet company and marketed as the latest 'must have' accessory.

But the scam was only spotted after a leading Japanese actress said her 'poodle' didn't bark and refused to eat dog food.

Maiko Kawakami, who starred in the Japanese thriller Violent Cop, showed photographs of her pet on a television talk show only to be told it wasn't a dog - but was in fact a lamb.

The discovery prompted hundreds of women to contact the police with similar problems and the authorities believe as many as 2,000 people have been conned.

'We launched an investigation after we were made aware that a company was selling sheep as poodles,' a police spokesman told The Sun.

'Sadly, we think there is more than one company operating in this way.

'The sheep are believed to have been imported from overseas - Britain and Australia.'

Poodles are famously used by the rich and glamourous on the continent but are extremely rare in Japan, with many people having little idea what they look like.

The company, which translates as Poodles as Pets, sold the 'poodles' for £630, about half the cost of a normal poodle but is now understood to have been shut down.

Don't they have sheep in Japan? Absolutely bizarre. Why is it cheaper to buy a lamb thinking it's a poodle than to buy the real thing?

Now, this has been duly related in other papers, has shown up on "Have I got News For You?" last Friday (27/04/07), and then featured again this morning on, erm, This Morning (eerily also hosted by Fern Britton). It's caused a bit of a stir all round. Except, ex-cept, it's bollocks. Snopes points out all the obvious stuff (such as no-body could mistake a sheep for a dog, hooves for paws, there isn't a company called "Poodles as Pets" in Sapporo, this hasn't been reported at all in the Japanese media, and best of all Maiko Kawakami told a funny story on a chat show about someone who bought a poodle, with the punch-line that it that turned out to be a sheep.)

All this is easily checkable. So why is it still running amok as a purported truth in the British media?

Let's see if it runs any more and watch the myth grow. Please post all sightings to this thread .

 

[rynner2]

The Times, Telegraph, Guardian and Independent seem to avoid this story as carefully as they avoid the Guernsey UFO!

In fact about the only Poodle they seem to mention apparently belongs to GWB....

 

[stu neville]

The Sun carried the story here.

THOUSANDS of rich women were conned by a firm into believing LAMBS were valuable miniature POODLES.

Entire flocks were imported to Japan from the UK and Australia then sold by the internet company as the latest “must have” pet.

The bizarre scam was rumbled when Japanese movie star Maiko Kawakami complained on a talk show that her new poodle refused to bark or eat dog food.....

..it continues.

The Express carried it here:

THOUSANDS of dog lovers in Japan had the wool pulled over their eyes when they spent more than £600 on fashionable miniature poodles – only to discover they were lambs.

The animals were even shorn to give them the same appearance as the famous show dogs...

The Daily Mail (hiss hiss) were carrying it under the headline "Ewe've been had" (try googling "sheep poodles" - the headline is there but now it's a 404.)

This is London published it too, but now proclaims

The article you have requested is unavailable

...(again Google will oblige with the headline, but for some reason the cache isn't playing for this or the Mail.)

So yeah, it's widespread.

 

[GNC]

If only we could track it to its source! It's new enough, but like so many of these tales the origin remains stubbornly obscure.

 

[Beakmoo]

In Thursday or Friday's Guardian they ran the story saying it wasn't true. Not sure which day but it was a short piece on page 2. They also gave some indication of where it had come from I think, but I'm not geting off my arse to check the recycling, I'm too lazy.

 

[liveinabin]

It was Saturdays and I have it still.

Quote:
Maiko owns neither a dog nor a lamb, she only told a story about someone mistaking one for the other, the Sapporo police have never heard of the scam. Oh and sheep aren't rare in Japan: they've been bred in Sapporo since 1848