April Fools Poodle Hoax-Hoax

A story circulating in the international news and in the blogosphere recently reported that Japanese women had been scammed into purchasing sheep that were being sold as poodles. Come on, they couldn’t see the hooves or hear the ‘Baaaaa’? If I were Japanese, I’d have been very insulted.

Of course, the story of the hoax turned out to be a hoax. From Snopes on their ‘Urban Legends’ page…

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 $1600 per sheep-dog before anyone caught on to the scam and blew the whistle.

No, the swindle story never made the news in Japan, which should have alerted gullible net-noobs to something amiss. Besides, the least bit of fact checking would have demonstrated that the company supposedly perpetrating the scam - ‘Poodles As Pets’ - doesn’t exist in Japan.

The hoax hoax was promoted when radio personality Paul Harvey broadcast the story on his For What It’s Worth program, reporting that “Thousands of women paid many thousands of dollars for miniature white poodles which are now growing up and turning out to be furniture-eating-sheep.”

Hahahaha!!! Oh, my. Looks like there are some newscasters out there who needed a classroom poodle in school to teach them that there is indeed a difference between a dog and a sheep. The Japanese already knew better!

12 Nifty Things About Poodles

…that you probably didn’t know!

King of Dogs!

In deference to my new Russian friends, I’ll start off by mentioning that there is some disagreement about where, exactly, the poodle breed originated. Some say northern Germany, others insist they started in Russia or on the steppes of central Asia. I will say that about 90% the people I’ve ever known in the circus/performing world who work with poodles are Russian, and that they’re quite passionate about the intelligence, loyalty and talents of their dogs. Given the intriguing hints that it was Russians who suffered most of the battle scars from Napoleon’s War Dogs, if poodles weren’t originally a Russian breed those Russians were wise enough to appreciate quality when they met it!

That said, there is no disagreement about the specific job poodles were developed to do - they were water retrievers, and this job explains some things about poodles that people may not have known…

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Welcome Russian Visitors!

I have been getting some hits from a Russian language site, and wish to welcome you all! I’m using the Paralink translation site to see what you are saying, and I thank “The Professor” for his/her link to this blog.

Now I’m going to try to post this in Cyrillic…

Napoleon’s Dogs: Literary License or Dread History?

Since adopting our first standard poodle a little over 20 years ago - and being Poodle People ever since - we’ve heard a lot of stories about poodles, poodle history and poodle talents from a lot of different people. One of my favorites has to do with how poodles came to be the National Dog of France. No, it wasn’t because poodles are so fashionable or even that they’re so fancy. And it wasn’t because poodles are such fine water retrievers and hunting dogs who aren’t the least bit gun shy.

As I recall the story (no, I don’t recall who told it to me), it has to do with Napoleon Bonaparte and his strong martial proclivities. Dogs had long been mascots and soldiers in war, from the time of the Vikings and the early Teutonic wars, primarily wolfhounds and other large breeds. When guns and artillery became standard noisemakers on the battlefields, dogs who would not be shy of the booms or the fire were kept. Among these were the poodle, and Napoleon liked his poodles big.

Known for fierce loyalty, fearlessness and intelligence, the war poodles were known to take part in battles on behalf of their regiments even without specific training for the task. In his memoirs Napoleon praised a poodle who died at the battle of Marengo, licking the face of his fallen Grenadier master. Another poodle named Buff accompanied Lt. Col.Chestmaster during the Peninsula War, while the poodle Moffino got sadly separated from his master while crossing the Berezina River in the Russian campaign. Moffino then traveled from Russia to Italy to find his corporal master, and they were gladly reunited.

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Poodle Stories for Christmas

This holiday season many of us are too busy decorating, baking and cooking, and preparing packages of goodies for shipping to do the usual holiday parking lot jousting and shopping mall power-hiking. As my medium is the internet, I will presume that like me, many of my readers will be doing most or all of their Christmas shopping on-line.

For all of us Poodle People, poodle gifts are at the top of our own wish lists and always catch our eyes when browsing for other people’s presents. Because I’ve been busy all week browsing for books for the family (we’re all avid readers who treasure our books), I thought some cool poodle books might be the order of the day.

50 Acres and a Poodle
Jeanne Marie Laskas

The editorial and customer reviews for 50 Acres and a Poodle make me think this book would be a great gift for all the Poodle People in my life. There’s nothing any of us like better than to tell poodle stories to anyone who will listen to them, and this looks to be 291 pages of poodle story!

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“Go Fetch Gramps, Timmy’s In The Well!”

It it just “tricks” or is it real skill?

We “dog-people” have known for awhile that television’s classic “Lassie” was a series of purebred collies (mostly male), trained to do all the tricks dramatized in the long-running series and its spin-offs from the 1950s to the 1970s.

We “Poodle-People” are used to dealing with a particular breed of dog that is so famous for its intelligence and desire to perform that many people on the street see a poodle and think “Circus Dog.” Performer. Actor. “Trick” dog.

I found a great web page this week entitled What is a Trick? written by standard poodle owner and dog trainer Charlene Dunlap. It examines the question of whether what poodles can be trained to do qualifies as actual learned skill, or just “tricks.”

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The Flying Poodle and the Bear

Her AKC registration name was “Kenya Queen Reba Amelia E.” She’s the only giant mutant mountain poodle… er, Imperial-size standard that we ever actually bought. Got her as a black hairball puppy from a couple whose actual business was to breed English Bulldogs in Savannah. The mama was their house pet, an impressive black. Paid $550 for her, had our pick of a litter of 6.

We’d answered an ad for the puppies, checked first to see if there were any close relatives or cousins in her bloodline and Uncle Bob’s. We wanted them to be a pair, and they were quite the pair. Though they never managed to have any pups of their own.

The naming of Kenya was quite the ordeal in a family with strong opinions and favorites. My husband wanted to name her “Queenie,” but only because his parents never let him name one of their dogs Queenie, and he thought it was a great dog name. I thought it was right up there with “Rover” or “Fido” - awful.

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The Personality of Poodles

“They say poodles aren’t ‘real’ dogs. At least, that’s what I tell motel desk people when we’re on the road with our Imperials and they say dogs aren’t allowed. It almost always works. In truth, their intelligence is amazingly human-like. They learn quickly, are highly creative, and love to be stars.”

That’s from the ‘About’ page of this blog. It describes something every ‘Poodle Person’ knows, and it’s honestly isn’t that difficult to convince other people - like your average motel desk clerk - that it’s true.

For a young guy being set up with a blind date, ‘personality’ isn’t necessarily a strong recommendation. Parents attempting to deal with a high-energy, short attention span child who might be better off on Ritalin, ‘personality’ can be a descriptive defense mechanism. The word itself contains the noun ‘person’, which does seem fairly exclusive to human beings. Yet poodles are famous for having personality to spare.

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Poodle History

Ah, poodles! The official national dog of France, beloved of old ladies, punks who love pink and purple hair dye, and talented circus performers ever since people figured out that kids and dogs will earn tips on the street, in the square or under the big top.

The first official notice of poodles appears on Roman and Greek coins from ~30 a.d., though suspiciously poodle-like hunting dogs are found in the detailed pictorial histories on tomb walls in Egypt and Mesopotamia. Where, legend has it, they were lion-hunters. When they weren’t the pampered pets of the ruling and priestly classes, that is. These would have been the big guys - “Imperials” - that Napoleon favored so highly.

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