Update: this is a hoax now (although the dogs originally did genuinely need a home in LA earlier this year, which was found for them). Just another internet chain letter. Thanks to Lalaroo in comments for the fact-check!
I received this as a forwarded email, so I’m keeping personal details unpublished but will pass the email details of anyone genuinely interested along to the original author, who has to move overseas and cannot take them along. Cookie and Coco are just 3 years old and deeply attached to each other, so they desperately want to place them together. They are also accustomed to small children.
We are moving overseas in just 2 weeks. Unfortunately, I have still not been able to find a good home for Cookie and Coco . We ‘ re not able to take our beloved doggies with us and I ‘ ve been desperately trying to find a home for both of them ‘ together ‘ . They were raised together and pine without each other. The Lab rescue have already said that they would probably separate them, so this is my last resort. Recently I tried to take Coco out in my car alone and she TOTALLY refused to even get into the car without Cookie…….!!!! She absolutely pulled back on her haunches until Cookie was by her side..
Both doggies are in great health, have been spayed and have ID chips implanted under the skin.
Cookie turned 3 December 10th and Coco turned 3 April 1st. Cookie is my mellow-yellow, and just loves her tummy rubbed. Coco is adorably funny and lives for her “ball.” She also loves the water…… Cookie loves lots of attention. Both doggies are loyal and love to walk. They have been raised with my 3 kids running around all over the place, and have survived Sammy ‘ s constant hugging and love of ‘ dress-up ‘ , so they are fantastic family dogs.. This is by far one of the most difficult decisions I have ever had to make, but under the circumstances I have no choice.
Please, please forward these pics to all your friends. I want to find a great home for these fabulous doggies. They are just adorable and it ‘s heartbreaking to let them go. In a perfect world, I hope that we could find someone local so that we can still keep in touch and visit them. I pray that someone, somewhere can help us keep Cookie and Coco together, and love them just as much as we do.Thank you all from the bottom of my heart.
Just passing it along.
Categories: Life
Soggy here, innit? 
In memoriam: Diana Rigg 
Getting out the ‘yes’ 
100 books by women in 2016 
Hoyden About Town 
This is actually a chain letter that started in LA in January. The dogs are real, and the owners really did need a home for them, but they have found one already (and they are in the US). I got this chain letter on a listserv I’m on in DC about a month ago, and another member pointed us to this Snopes article on the chain letter.
Lalaroo, thanks for the link to the snopes article. I got it from someone I consider reliable, so I reposted without checking. (All the afu people who still read this blog can go ahead with the pointing and the laughing now.) What a classic example of a morphing chain letter – looking at the email I was sent it’s only the last but one forwarder who said the dogs were in Melbourne. I’m glad the labs found a good home and that the original family can still meet up with them.
Steph, your comment crossed with Lalaroo’s, but it looks like reposting would be pointless,
Tigtog, can I repost this in my food blog? (which I know has a lot of Melb readers)
This chain mail is a little short on details. If I forward it along to six friends, will I have a significant win in the lottery? If I don’t forward it on will I be blighted with the Black Plague? Inquiring minds want to know.
I miss the old chain mails of yesteryear, before we’d heard of the internet. The scrappy sheets of paper that had been photocopied from previous photocopies of other photocopies, with a 2 cent coin sticky-taped to the bottom, usually bashed out on somebody’s Remington, with umpteen spelling errors, and containing several marvellous fictional stories about amazing things that happened to people fortunate enough to forward on the chain letters. Sure, they were fuzzy, illegible, poorly edited, rather immoral, hard to believe, and of generally poor quality, but they had soul.
@ TimT – If you send me $50, good things will happen for me. Doesn’t quite do it for soul though does it. I think the Nigerian bank scam has been the death knell for chain letters, plus the cost of postage, and actually having to physically send the letter.
Ah, I remember my first snail-mail advance fee fraud scam letter. How things have changed.
I got an invite the other day on Facebook to become part of a pyramid scheme. But it’s just not the same…
This stuff just pisses me off big time. ‘Heartbreaking’? ‘love them to death’? Then take the damned dogs with you. It’s great that they’re happily rehomed. But they’ve just taken up two spots that could have been given to two other dogs looking for homes. The amount of homes is finite. It’s a zero sum game. There’s lots of labs looking for a home who really need one, so basically these people are contributing to two other dogs having to be put down. The reason the Lab Association couldn’t take them is that they’re probably up to their necks with homeless dogs. And when they’re a pair who can’t be split, that’s increasing the difficulty of re-homing exponentially.
It’s completely possible to take dogs with you when you move overseas. It takes money, organisation and a strong desire to take the dogs with you. I’ve known people who have sacrificed financially big time to shift their dogs os. And if it really can’t be done – then don’t move overseas.
When will people get the message that pets are for life, not just until they’re inconvenient. And what would have happened to the dogs if they hadn’t found them a home?
Fine, if you read the snopes page you will find that the “overseas” part was added later as part of the chain-mail, and was not in fact the reason that the actual original family could no longer keep the dogs. The actual original family had their home repossessed and had to move into crisis accommodation where they were not allowed to have the dogs.
I’ve never commented here, I just lurk, but I am actually moving overseas later this month, and my wife and I were definate about taking our cat. It’s going to cost just as much to move Jane (the cat) as it is me, but we knew that it’s part of our responsibility as care-givers to do the right thing.
And we love Jane to death, too!
Tigtog, that just add to my gripe. I also don’t understand why people don’t have contingency plans for their pets if disaster strikes. For instance; people coming to an agreement about who’d look after the animals when the owner dies. That too, is part of a pet owner’s responsibility.
Wow, nice empathy work there Fine. Of course advertising for people willing to rehome their dogs rather than taking them straight to the nearest shelter is grossly negligent. What a crock. They were successfully rehomed BTW.
No Su, I have tons of empathy for the labradors who didn’t choose to be owned by these people, have absolutely no agency in the situation and were extremely lucky that they didn’t die. Empathy for the owners who chose to put them in that situation – zero.
For heaven’s sake, I know homeless people who manage to take excellent care of their dogs.
I foster dogs for a couple of different agencies and it’s made me extremely cynical about the choices people make when it comes to animals. What if they couldn’t have been rehomed, which often happens? What about he fact that there are a finite number of homes for dogs and these two getting homes, means another two don’t? What about the fact that the owners hadn’t planned for what would happen to their dogs if they couldn’t have them anymore?
I note that the ad says that the dog are loyal. Pity the owners didn’t learn from them.
Still haven’t read the Snopes link have you? Positive correlation between your obvious misanthropy and your concern for animals duly noted.
Yes, I’ve read the Snopes article, su. What of it? If you choose to have an animal then it’s your responsibility to find accommodation which will cater for that animal. If you’re not prepared to do that, don’t get one, much less two, in the first place. Repossession doesn’t happen overnight, it takes months.
The misanthropy remark is just nonsense. Imagine having concern for animals! Shocking character flaw.
This disagreement has now derailed the thread. I doubt that any further exploration of this aspect of the discussion is going to be productive.
Which is exactly what the people concerned did. If you cannot imagine financial ruin coming on at such a pace that all prior arrangements need sudden renegotiating then the problem is with your own class privilege, rather than with these people who demonstrably did an admirable job of coping with financial ruin while making sure their dogs had the best possible care.
You might like to consider that you would be received rather more warmly here if you didn’t only make an appearance when you felt like some criticism was in order and if your pronouncements were reasonable. If you are not merely covering for the fact you couldn’t be bothered to read all of the post and links by pretending that a family who did in fact find good homes for their animals to the extent that they maintain contact with the new owners to this day, I’ll eat my invisibul hat.
I feel silly about passing an email on without checking Snopes – unfortunately, I got it from a friend who runs a boarding kennel and is the unofficial rehomer for her area, and we got Ollie from her via just such an email, so it got in under my radar. Sorry all!!
But I was very happy to hear that the lovely dogs had been rehomed.
If I had time to blog, there was an article in Fairfax recently that made steam come out of my ears, about the Lost Dogs Home in Melbourne. People COMPLAINING because they PUT DOGS DOWN. Yes, because not 100% of dogs can be rehomed, stupid slow-news-day journo, and the LDH picks up all the dogs that OTHER PPL can’t be bothered with. The LDH does a wonderful job. Assholes! (The beatup media that is!)
Sorry Tigtog, I didn’t refresh the browser before posting that last comment . Apologies for the derail.
Quite right Tigtog. My apologies