ohmidog!

One of the latest sensations sweeping the Internet is a YouTube video that most everybody is reporting shows two dogs Skyping with each other.

“Watch these dogs have a heated Skype convo,” reads the headline on Mashable, accompanied by a video of two wirehaired fox terriers seeming to converse on Skype.

Mashable reports that the dogs have learned to “use technology to stay connected and maintain their long distance relationship.”

“Two Dogs Skype Each Other,” says the Huffpost headline in a piece that also features the video.

Even organizations that often report original news have seized on the alleged Skyping dogs video and presented it as fact.

“Emotional dog friends Skype across the miles” WAFB reports in a story that, like most of the others, first assumes that the dogs are actually Skyping, then goes on to venture guesses on what they might be talking about.

Says KITV: “Skype helps reconnect anyone with distant friends, even dog friends hoping to catch up with each other.”

We’re quite sure dogs do, with help from their owners, Skype each other. And maybe it’s even newsworthy. But the point is these two — despite how numerous media sources are portraying it — aren’t.

We all know the Internet is not a place that lets facts get in the way, but we’d hope that news outlets, at least, would slow down enough to check things out — whether its Skyping dogs, conspiracy theories or celebrity couplings.

What the video actually shows is not two dogs Skyping, but one dog watching a video of another dog.

What makes the snowballing mischaracterization even more amazing is that the owner of Gaytor, in posting the video on YouTube, admits as much. Under the headline “My Dog Can Skype,” she explains that Gaytor enjoys Skyping with other dogs, but admits that, in this particular video, he’s merely watching another dog on a YouTube video.

The video Gaytor is watching and responding to features a wire haired terrier named Basil, also from the UK. Basil’s howls are in reaction to ringtone alerts on his owner’s Blackberry.

As fate, and the Internet, would have it, Basil’s owner saw the video of Gaytor reacting to Basil, and showed it to Basil, who reacted to Gaytor reacting to him.

“Thanks for featuring my Basil video, glad your dog likes to watch it. Basil would love to meet Gaytor someday. I played your movie to him this morning and he sung along to it,” Basil’s owner said in a comment posted to the Gaytor video.

All of which is fun — and perhaps worthy of another video showing Gaytor’s reaction to Basil’s reaction to Gaytor’s reaction to him –  but it’s not Skyping.

Here’s the original Basil video: