A friend's dog ran away over the weekend. Mother and moron have since been reunited, but for 24 hours, there was much drama. For my part, I was driving in ever-increasing concentric circles around my friend's house, looking for corpses. We all do what we can.
The guy who found the dog posted a "FOUND" ad on craigslist. He told my friend that he'd gotten five bogus calls about the dog, each claiming ownership. This pissed me off. So I decided to do a sting. I would advertise that I'd found a Portuguese Water Dog roaming near Costco, and I would very much like to see this sweet girl reunited with its owner. And I would include an especially cute photo of Dex. And when the would-be dog thieves wrote me, I would publish their emails and names here. The bastards would get what they deserved.
And so I ran my ad. And the emails didn't come. Not one person tried to steal my dog.
I did get a couple of nice emails, from people suggesting that I check to see if the dog was microchipped. And I got one from Dex's breeder, some 100 miles away, panicked that Dex was roaming the streets.
Experiment summary
Pride in Dex: gone
Faith in humanity: restored. Well, not restored. Just not diminished any further.
Faith in myself: diminished further