Hoax posts claiming to show dog injured in ‘hit-and-run’ circulate on Facebook

Warning: some of the links in this article contain graphic images

Facebook posts claiming to be searching for the owner of an injured dog in Prescot, Thanet, Bedford, Kidderminster and elsewhere are fake.

The posts, which have appeared in various buy and sell Facebook groups with the location changed each time, read: “Hallo There. I am seriously searching for this guy’s owner 💔. found him lying on the side road in [Prescot]. He was hit by a car in a hit-and-run incident. I took him to the vet he is not chipped I know someone is looking for him. He misses his family, I'll continue to take care of him in the meantime. Please bump this post to help me find his owner!!”

However, the image attached to the posts is taken from a news article published in June 2022 reporting on a dog attack in County Armagh, Northern Ireland.

The dog in the photo is a Bischon Frise mix assistance dog called Cody, who was reportedly attacked by two other dogs and left injured.

We regularly fact check hoax posts in Facebook groups, such as reports of missing children, elderly relatives or pets. We have seen instances in which these sorts of posts are edited later to offer cheap housing, links to surveys or other freebies, with comments often disabled so other social media users are unable to identify the post as a hoax. 

Hoaxes can damage people’s trust in local community news, because groups can become overwhelmed with false information. As a result, genuine posts may be ignored or dismissed as false. 

We have written to Meta expressing these concerns and asking the company to take stronger action in response to this problem.

Image courtesy of John Holden