I hope this is a joke. If not, I’ll feel much smarter.
By the by, has anyone herd from Hal? 
(As a newbie, I apologize to the much cooler Doper. Forgive me, the temptation was to great.)
That’s OK, the joke wasn’t too baaad. Wooly, it wasn’t. I’m feeling a little sheepish here. I better take it on the lamb now before ewe ram your fist down my throat.
To err is human, to a fraud - ovine.
Oh, I’m going to hell, alright. Where do the bad puns sit?
That’s quite a yarn, MM. I can’t believe that anyone, let alone thousands of people, would be so stewepid. It’s as baaaad as that Chihuahua/rat story, butt that at least was an urban legend.
Thinking of 2,000 people not realizing dogs don’t have hooves makes me chuckle.
It has me wondering what is in the basic books about farm animals and pets in Japan!
And then there IS the internet–a thing quite popular in Japan, when last I checked…
In British novels from the 1920s and '30s, I sometimes run across the term “poodle-fakers” or “poodle-faking.” Now I know what it means… 
Bah. Nothing wrong with it. Haven’t you heard of sheepdogs?
Really, though, I do hope this is just a joke or a myth. Even if people cannot somehow see any difference between a poodle and a little sheeplet, I really hate to think of these lambs being offered the wrong food and so on. Not good.
I can’t imagine that it’s real. After all, wouldn’t all these starving lambs being taken to vets be a clue?
StG
I recall a James Thurber piece from the 1930s in which someone wrote to a (fictitious) plant expert about the “Uruguayan Whooping Fig,” and got the reply that it was actually a dead rabbit. The Uruguayan government had a surplus of dead rabbits it was trying to unload.
I’m having a really hard time believing this. Hungry lambs may not bark, but they sure make a helluva lot of noise. And two thousand grown women with money to burn who’ve never seen a picture of a poodle or a sheep?
That what I thought when I first saw the story on Fark. I pictured poor lambs dying from malnutrition because morons were trying to give them dog food.
ETA: And as Cher mentioned just above me, I find it hard to believe that anyone could have a hungry lamb going “BaaaaaaaaaaH” and be asking “Why doesn’t my dog bark?” (As per the article I read.) I think it’s a news hoax.
Not to mention the fact that Japan has dog breeds of its own. It’s not like this is a completely foreign species. I don’t know how common poodle breeds are to Japan, but dogs are common enough.
Maybe there aren’t a lot of sheep.
:smack:
Well, they apparently don’t have a lot of them, but if they celebrate the Year of the Sheep I’m betting they’ve got pictures.
Baa humbug.
Here ewe have it: Looks like mutton instead of mutts is anurban legend
I hope they lambaste the guy that pulled the wool over our eyes!
According to the book Wild Sheep Chase, this is true.