Viral Facebook posts are claiming that people are putting nails in dog sausages and dog food are just rumors.
“Sick [expletive] all over the UK are putting nails into sausages then leaving them for dogs in parks and popular walking areas. DOG OWNERS BEWARE. Please share this and spread the word. Sick bastards,” one of them reads, with an accompanying photo of a sausage.
Another variant of the rumor says, “Please share this to make people aware Apparently people are putting nails into sausages/food and leaving them in parks/ popular dog walking areas Pet owners should beware Horrendous.”
The rumor has been around since January 2013 after it was reported that people were putting nails in dog sausages in Abergavenny, Wales, in the United Kingdom.
The BBC at the time reported that “some 40 sausages were found in Llwynu Lane, Abergavenny” and each sausage “had eight or nine nails embedded in them.”
They were found in a popular dog-walking location. The images that the BBC published were used in the viral rumors that were going around this week.
About.com writer David Emery notes that the “all over the U.K.” claim the Facebook postings are making in February 2014 are outdated and misleading. “As of this writing, there have been no reports of incidents matching the above description anywhere in the U.K. in 2014,” he writes.
No dogs were harmed by nail-spiked sausages or dog food last year, reported the Abergavenny Chronicle.
