A Lesson For All

Something happened last week that I wanted to share because I think it's a good lesson for everyone. Okay, maybe it's just a good lesson for a certain member of my family who shall remain nameless. Either way, I thought it was kind of a funny story.

Chad received a forwarded email from a friend of ours, and while he is generally the first one (or maybe the second one, next to me) to delete all of those pleas for help, warnings, chain letters, and other emails that we all receive on a weekly basis, this one he forwarded just to me because it related to dogs in need. While I'm sure he didn't actually think I would forward it on, he knew that I would do my best to check out the veracity of the story. Call me a skeptic, but it's what I've become accustomed to doing whenever I receive an email of any sort which tells me to forward on "important" information. I'm a big fan of Snopes.com and encourage all my friends and family to use it as well.

The body of the particular email in question looked like this:

RE: 2 Black Labs need a home ASAP

The owner of these 2 beautiful labs has terminal cancer and can't care
for them anymore. He is heartbroken and hopes to find a family for
them while he is still able. These boys are 4 years old and have been
raised together and he would like very much to find a home who can take
them both so they can stay together.

Details: Two beautiful 4 year old purebred male Black Labs, Hunter and
Fame, both neutered. They are truly wonderful dogs. The owner's
Grandchildren can crawl all over them and like a typical lab, they just
lay there and love it. Both are up to date on their shots, housebroken
and very well behaved. He would love to keep these two boys together
if possible as they were raised together and are the best of friends.

Thanks!

Jim Wolf
Office: 314-962-9400
Mobile: 314-322-5903

The attached picture (which I forgot to save) was adorable, so the message obviously tugged at everyone's heartstrings, but I wanted to check out the email's "truthiness" before sending it on. Instead of looking on Snopes.com for the story, I decided to do my own Nancy Drew detective work. I could have just called the number listed at the bottom of the email, but that would have been long distance, and the phone isn't my preferred method of communication anyway.

So I took the work phone number from the email message above, and did a reverse phone number search through 411.com. It came up with the name of a business in St. Louis, called Human Resource Management Corporation, which I then Googled. The company's website popped up, so I clicked on the staff page and found that the Jim Wolf of the email was none other than the President of the company! His email address was published on their site, so I sat down and composed the following note:

Mr. Wolf,

I just received this email forwarded from a friend, and I thought that
before sending it on, I would make sure that these dogs were, in fact,
still looking for a home. Your name and phone number were listed at the
bottom of the email. Do the dogs belong to you or someone in your
family?

Thank you,
Kim Luce
Lawrence, KS

Now this isn't the first time I've done something like this trying to verify a forwarded email that I suspected was a hoax. However, in previous cases the email has either bounced back because it was bogus to begin with (hey, that was some pretty good alliteration), or I've just never received a response at all, which tells me it was probably not really as important as it was made out to be!

This time, however, I had to laugh at the response I received, just a couple of hours later:

Kim,

Thanks so much for checking before forwarding this message on. The dogs
were adopted, actually the day after I forwarded this message to ONE
person.

Since Valentine's Day, I've received only 7 email messages about the
dogs...and ONLY this one that wanted to check on the status before
forwarding it any further. THANK YOU VERY MUCH!

It is the phone calls that I am trying to stop!! I have now received
more than 500 calls to either of my phones, covering 18 states (from
California to New York)!

Please help me "Call off the Dogs" by replying to everyone that was on
the email to you, and letting them know of the status. I appreciate the
outpouring of support from everyone.

Thanks very much!

Best regards,
Jim Wolf

I can't believe this poor guy received hundreds of phone calls in just a few weeks time after sending the email to ONE person! I know people just want to feel like they're doing something to help, but how much more helpful (and less annoying) would it have been to actually take the 10 minutes necessary to check this story out instead of just emailing it to everyone in their address book! Although this story happened to be true and just slightly outdated, you'll find that the vast majority of the crap that's swimming around the Internets is either completely fictitious or just blown way out of proportion once you actually check it out.

While I do understand why compassionate and caring people try to help by forwarding things on, I will never understand why other people (who I think must be slightly deranged) make up stuff to add to such emails. After doing the research, I often find that what started out to be a true story has been so distorted and embellished it's become completed unbelievable and unrecognizable. What is that all about? What possesses someone to do that?

Regardless of the psychology behind the email forwarding phenomenon, the next time someone sends you an email pleading for you to send it on, check out the story on Snopes.com. If you doubt it's veracity and still want to do something helpful through email, pick a dog on Petfinder and send a link to his picture all over the web instead! Those dogs are always always in need and their pictures are always kept current! :)