Company cons women by selling lambs as poodles

[Tuffty]

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.

If the dodgy cut style didn't make it obvious already, I would immediately be suspicious whenever the 'dog' started to bleat.

[zlchn]

hahaha How can you no know that your pet is a lamb? that's hilarious.

[楊枝君]

*dies* Oh that's just fantastic!

[Wuffer]

Bosses took advantage of the fact sheep are rare in Japan and most people do not know what they look like.

Feels weird that people in Japan weren't familiar with sheep... xD That means, wouldn't it be even more popular to own a sheep instead of a dog over there?

[Tyball]

Most of the people caught out by the scam are donating the sheep to zoos and farms.

Don't the Japanese like lambchops? 

[doinkies]

Feels weird that people in Japan weren't familiar with sheep... xD That means, wouldn't it be even more popular to own a sheep instead of a dog over there?

I think most people DO actually know about sheep. After all they have their own word for sheep (羊/hitsuji), and a while back Nono had a sheep character on the H!M skits. They might not be familiar with the particular breed of sheep that this scammer tried to pass off as a poodle, but that doesn't mean they don't know about sheep...

Then again, this is a Sun article, and the Sun is notorious in the UK for its doinkiness and over-sensational articles...

[reyfer]

I'm sorry, but this seems like a fake article to me. Japanese are not used to sheep? They have a year named after sheep, and sheep are present in lots of folk tales, so this seems like something set to make the japanese look like ignorant (even if you are not used to sheep, I don't think you would  mistake one with a dog).

[TydusArandor]

Lol, maybe it's just because of the breeds. I think it'll be pretty cool to own a sheep though

(Don't we have someone that can't tell a papaya from a mango?  )

[orangesocks]

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.

 

The "poodle's" face looks like a sheep's too...haha. Oh well. They should just keep 'em.

[doinkies]

I've looked into this further and it seems that this story was distorted.

doinkies searched a little, and found this blog entry (in Japanese) about it. Basically, what the entry says is that Kawakami Maiko went on an afternoon talk show called Gokigenyou a week ago or so, and she said that it was a friend of hers who wanted a poodle and ended up getting tricked by a website that made sheep up to look like poodles. Not Maiko herself, but a friend. And doinkies has no idea where these "thousands" of other people came from either. They don't quote anyone else who was fooled, nor do they quote the channel that airs Gokigenyou...if thousands of people had found out they were tricked after watching that episode and called into the channel about it, I'm sure that the people running the channel would have something to say about that.

Also, aside from a couple other blog entries about the episode, doinkies has not seen any mention of this in Japanese news. If some weird scam like this was happening on such a large scale, doinkies is sure the Japanese news would report on it too. Also, why would they need to import sheep into Hokkaido when I've heard there are already lots of sheep farms there? This seems like an urban legend/rumor to doinkies...for all I know there could be such a scam but it's certainly not on the large scale that this article makes it out to be. I think The Sun just wanted a weird story to tell, to capitalize on the "Those wacky Japanese!" stereotypes...

As the Japanese blogger linked above says, "It's uncertain whether or not this story is true, but if it is, this person is quite the idiot." Many of the comments on the blog are of the same type as the comments here, basically "Somebody thought a sheep was a poodle? What a doink!".

[Tyball]

I'm usually pretty skeptical towards what I read in The Sun. Garamond thanks doinkies for the info. 

[Wuffer]

I think most people DO actually know about sheep. After all they have their own word for sheep (羊/hitsuji), and a while back Nono had a sheep character on the H!M skits. They might not be familiar with the particular breed of sheep that this scammer tried to pass off as a poodle, but that doesn't mean they don't know about sheep...

Ah, I didn't really mean knowing but to be able to tell the difference between a sheep and other animal...
Thanks for clearing up that the article was disorted.

But this reminded me about the joke we have which implied that something like that could happen
A lawyer from a big city was driving through the country and saw a shepherd at the side of a paddock. The lawyer pulled over, walked to the shepherd and asked: "If I can guess how many sheep you have in your herd, can I get one of them?" The shephard agreed and the lawyer went back to his car and used the internet and satellites to count the sheep. He then went back to the shepherd and said: "You have 1065 sheep" The shephers said it was correct so the lawyer took one sheep and started to walk back to his car. The shepherd then asked: "If I guess your profession, will I get my sheep back?" The lawyer agreed. The shepherd said: "You are a lawyer." "Yes! That is correct", answered the lawyer. "Now can I get my DOG back?", the shepherd asked.

[zlchn]

doinkies, thanks for the update and clarification. Something didn't seem right with that original article to me.

[Guchi_Jnr]

Feels weird that people in Japan weren't familiar with sheep...

All Japanese people know what a sheep is, but unless they have been to a zoo, they wouldn't have seen one in real life.
(Tennoji Zoo in Osaka has a sheep display. I laughed pretty hard when I saw that display)

But since Japanese are generally huge dog lovers, it's hard to believe anyone here didn't know what a real poodle looks like.

[Tuffty]

Jeez, you'd think if you were going to print a story, you'd look up and get the facts right, at least. Happened recently with another story as well. I guess I should've known something was up when the Sun was involved. :s

[reyfer]

Article speaking about the mess the Sun got into: http://au.news.yahoo.com/070427/23/1398y.html

While it was reported the con succeeded for so long because sheep are rare in Japan and many people would never have seen one, Cerebral Soup said the area said to have suffered the scam was actually the centre of sheep breeding in Japan.

[Asmodai]

Still ridiculously funny.

I don't think it reflects on Japanese people generally, but I know individuals who are ditzy enough to fall for it.

[ew0923]

I was laughing my head off when I saw this in the paper yesterday, I really have a lot trouble imagining how anyone can see a baby sheep as a poodle. For once, I have to give credit to the guy that actually thought up the scam and got away with it for so long.

[doinkies]

Snopes posted about this article:

http://www.snopes.com/critters/lurkers/poodlesheep.asp

This tale of dog lovers in Japan taken by swindlers who "imported entire flocks of sheep from the UK and Australia" and sold them as poodles hit the news in April 2007 when it was published in some UK newspapers (including the Metro and the Sun) known for their not infrequent detours into the fantastic. Many readers spotted its remarkable similarity to the hoary "Mexican Pet" urban legend, in which unsuspecting tourists traveling in a foreign country adopt a small stray dog, only to discover later that their new pet is actually a very large form of rat.

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 $1,600 per sheep-dog before anyone caught on to the scam and blew the whistle.

[Tyball]

Yeah it's funny, but I don't like it when the Japanese gets singled out as "some strange people in the Far East".
Even though I laughed at the article at first, it left me with a bad taste in my mouth (figuratively speaking).