I don't know if anyone has already posted something like this, so here it goes. I'm hoping that this will be a fun game we can play.

Post a story. It can be real or not, but don't say if it is or not until enough people ask (how many is up to the writer of the story). Keep it clean, but the stranger, the better. It can be something that you've experienced, or someone you know has, or even something you've heard or read about. But be certain yourself whether or not you know it's real or made-up.

My first story is this:

I had a friend who had one of those little tiny dogs that was always barking. The dog would bark all night. Then my friend met a guy whom she married after only a short while of dating. It turns out that the guy was always getting mad at the dog for barking and waking him up. This guy, as it turns out, was also abusive. He would throw things at the dog, and sometimes would chase the dog into the dog house with a broom, to get the dog to be quiet.

It didn't take long for my friend to realize that she had married the waaaay wrong guy, so she booted him out (to get a divorce) and it was just her and the dog again.

She was so depressed about the whole messy marriage and did that whole "I'll probably never meet anyone nice" thing for a few weeks. During those weeks, she was home a lot, when she realized that the neighbor's dog barked all night long. She figured it was just her luck that her dog had taught their dog to bark like that even though her own dog was quite now.

It only took a few nights of that dog barking on the other side of the fence for her to get upset about it. She said it was hard enough trying to sleep, without the dog next door keeping her up half of the night.

After the first week, she was exhausted. During the second week, she started thinking up ways to shut the dog up. By the third week, she'd had enough and devised a way to silence the dog for good. In the middle of the night, after checking the dog house for her own pooch, when the neighbor's hound was yapping away, she threw some poisoned meat over the fence. She had also been drinking at night, supposedly to help her sleep.

She heard the dog wolf the meat down, and went back inside to enjoy a wonderful night's sleep. In the morning, she was wakened early by her neighbor. She knew she was busted.

Throwing on her robe, she answered the door. Standing at her door, was her neighbor, holding her own sleeping dog! Before she could even ask how the neighbor got her dog, the neighbor explained: My friend's ex had been hitting the dog with a broom. To get away from him, the dog had dug under the fence to the neighbor's yard, where it would bark all night. The neighbors weren't bothered by the dog because he and his wife were sleeping on the second floor, far up enough for the dog's barking to sound far away.

When my friend threw the meat over the fence, she had no idea that it was her own dog that ate it. Her dog was dead, not sleeping. Crying, she took her dog, laid him on a throw blanket from the couch, and ran to the dog house, where she knew she had seen him sleeping last night. She shoved her head in the hole and saw the fluffy dog toy that resembled her dog. The one that she had given him, thinking it would be so cute to see him carry a stuffed animal around that looked like him.

I don't think she could have been any more sorry for her stupidity.

But is this story true, or made-up?

Why do you think so (either way)?