Puppies Found in Trash Bin Need a Home
• Part 1: Email Text
• Part 2: Photos
• Part 3: Analysis
Initially distributed to a small list of friends and coworkers by Maria Alvarez of California on April 28, 2003, the foregoing message and attached photos are authentic, but outdated. They were outdated 24 hours after the message was written, in fact, by which time all nine of the abandoned puppies were already spoken for.
Be that as it may, the email is still in circulation, well illustrating the pitfalls of email do-gooding. Ms. Alvarez's original flier contained valid contact information, prompting no fewer than 300 well-meaning phone calls from around the U.S. to her work and home numbers. As commonly happens, the contact info was deleted from the fast-replicating message at some point in its travels, leaving interested parties with no means of contacting its author at all.
"Each sender included a note that the puppies had been found by a friend of a friend, a friend of a relative or a sibling's co-worker," writes Larry Powell, a Dallas Morning News reporter who made it his mission to track down the origins of the message. "Each time I contacted a sender, the sender said he or she really didn't know anything for sure. They were just trying to help the puppies."
After two weeks of searching, Powell finally located Alvarez through an early posting of the flier, complete with phone number, on an Internet message board. She seemed a bit daunted by the overwhelming response to her plea, but confirmed it all ended happily for the nine abandoned pooches. "My original email was sent out April 28 and the puppies were all gone by the 29th," she told Powell.
If only the same could be said of the email itself.
Update: A similar message advertising six abandoned black labrador pups circulated in September and October of 2007.
Sources and further reading:
Email Plea Spreads
Dallas Morning News, 24 May 2003
Last updated: 06/05/03
