Cookie and Coco

I like to think I’m pretty smart when it comes to spotting scams and hoaxes, especially ones that circulate via e-mail.  I only forward stuff that has made me laugh or that I think other folks will find interesting. I never, ever forward anything that has to do with religion, forward any sort of chain message or anything looking to raise money so that some six year old Guatamalen boy can have two mystery testicles removed from  his forehead. I think I help keep my contacts’ inboxes’ clutter free.

On the off chance that I get something that I’m not sure about, I head on over to Snopes and do a search on it.  Most of the times, it turns out to be spam or just an urban legend making it’s way through the interwebs. The “delete” button in my inbox is used often.

When I got an e-mail from S the other day about two labradors who needed a home. S had received the e-mail from our friend Darla who had received it from a co-worker. A quick search on Snopes didn’t turn up anything. Thinking that the person who initiated the e-mail was a co-worker of Darla’s, I let myself believe that Cookie and Coco really were in need of a home.

The e-mail said that the family was moving from a house to an apartment and the dogs weren’t allowed. They were great with kids and couldn’t bare to be apart from each other. The owner was hoping to find someone who would be able to take them both in.

I copied the contents of the e-mail and forwarded it to friends and some of the folks I work with. One lady, D, used to have a lab and she forwarded the message on to a friend who is part of a dog rescue network. D’s friend, who had a 100 acre farm, said she wouldn’t be able to take the labs permanently but would be able to foster them until they found a home.  S and I were excited, we thought we were helping two very adorable dogs find a new home.

That was at the end of last week. When I opened my work e-mail on Monday morning, I had a message from D saying someone had seen her e-mail and notified her it was a hoax. I clicked on the link and it turns out Coco and Cookie were indeed real, they just happened to be living out in California.

The article explained how the whole thing started: Sas Behzadi a California mother of three, had her house in foreclosure and wasn’t able to take the dogs with her to the apartment her and her family were moving to. Like most people, she turned to e-mailing her friends looking for herlp. They in turn e-mailed their friends and pretty soon the e-mail had gone viral. A month after Behzadi (a nickname) first sent out her e-mail, people across the world were forwarding it on in the hopes of finding a home for two beautiful labs.

Needless to say, I was a bit embarrassed to have let myself get caught up in the excitement. I should have searched beyond Snopes, done a more exhaustive search on Google. Silly me, I assumed that it really was someone Darla’s co-worker knew.  When I saw those two faces, common sense just went out the window. My heart broke at the thought of them being separated or worse yet, ending up in a shelter. I couldn’t imagine being in a situation where we would have to give up the gal pal or the littler head. I think I’d go hungry before I let anything happen to them.

Lesson learned, I guess. It could be worse, I could be $150K in the hole.

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