Fact check: Widespread image of injured dog is a hoax

Hannah Hudnall, USA TODAY
·3 min read

The claim: Image shows injured dog found on the side of the road

Social media users are sharing a picture of an injured dog covered in blood in Facebook groups across the world. The posts claim the dog was found on the side of the road in various locations.

"Hi all, I’m desperately trying to find the owner of this sweet girl I picked up about half an hour ago along side road," reads the caption of one Oct. 27 Facebook post. "We are in Monument Co."

Comments on the post are disabled.

A similar iteration of the post garnered more than 3,000 shares in two days before it was altered to instead show a credit card advertisement for a bank with a lengthy history of customer complaints.

Nearly identical viral posts also claimed the dog was found in towns such as Northumberland and Amesbury in the United Kingdom. Those posts, however, were later altered as well.

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But the claimed event never happened. The image was originally captured in Melbourne, Australia, in 2019 after a dog fight.

USA TODAY reached out to the users who shared the posts for comment.

Posts converted to bank ad

After gaining thousands of shares, many of the posts that previously featured a picture of the injured dog now feature an ad for a Go2Bank account.

Go2Bank, also known as Green Dot Bank, has a lengthy list of complaints in an array of online discussion forums and review pages. The Better Business Bureau has not rated Green Dot, but its page shows a rating of 1.09 stars out of 5 across 626 reviews.

No truth to dog claim

The picture of the injured dog was originally captured in 2019 when a blogger and dog groomer named Annie Nolan tried to break up a dog fight.

Nolan shared the picture on Facebook, along with a picture of herself covered in blood.

"Hi friends, just seeking some help to locate the owner of the dog involved in the dog attack on the corner of Barkly and Victoria street in Footscray," the caption of the post reads.

Fact check: Identical injured dog posts are a viral scam

The story was covered by several local Australian news outlets at the time, such as 7NEWS and The Age. Nolan was driving by with her friend when she saw the small white dog being attacked by another dog on a leash, according to 7NEWS. She tried to separate the dogs and was left injured, having to go to the hospital to treat her wounds.

USA TODAY previously debunked claims that a dog was hit by a car in multiple locations across the U.S. The false claims were formatted similarly, with the comments turned off and identical captions.

Our rating: False

Based on our research, we rate FALSE the claim that an image shows an injured dog found on the side of the road. The image was originally captured in Melbourne in 2019 after a dog fight was broken up. Many of the posts making this claim were converted to an ad for a bank account after accumulating a large number of shares.

Our fact-check sources:

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This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Fact check: Image of injured dog supposedly found by road is a hoax

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