Not everything's what it seems.

It was meant to be a bloody joke, okay not in the greatest of tastes but just a joke. How the hell it’s landed me in this mess I’ll never know. Public enemy number 1, 3 nights in jail and all because of a silly idea and stupid do-gooders on social networks.

When Havana was a puppy she wouldn’t eat or drink, the vet told us to force feed her. It wasn’t easy, but basically with the help of a baby’s bottle and a lot of scratches we managed to get her eating. God, for a little dog she couldn’t half put up a fight. Jen thought it was hilarious watching me and the hound fighting over her food and one night even took photos of the drama.

About 3 months later, with Havana sleeping soundly at my feet, I was trying to teach myself how to use Photoshop. I was quite rubbish at it, my attempts to put my head on Jen’s body or Havana’s head on my body were amateur in the extreme. Until that is I managed to replace the baby’s bottle in the photo of me and Havana  with one of a bottle of Jack Daniels. It looked brilliant, Havana’s scared eyes and my serious look coupled with this stupid bottle.  So proud was I of the effort I posted it on Facebook. To quote Julia Roberts big mistake, big. Before I knew it the photo had gone viral; only my message that accompanied it ‘Finally getting the hang of Photoshop’ had been lost along the way. It was now replaced with ‘Repost until someone recognises HIM and he can be prosecuted!’

Didn’t anyone think it could have been faked? Didn’t anyone stop for a moment and wonder? No, of course not, they all hopped on the nearest available bandwagon and yelled for blood, my blood.

Of course it wasn’t long before my inbox was full of hate mail, death threats, vile descriptions of what people would do to me and weirdly, one marriage proposal. Then of course there was the knock on my door, actually not so much a knock but a thump, police and animal welfare officers piled in. Havana was barking as they led her away but I was calm, surely it would be a matter of time before they found out it was just a prank.

I didn’t expect that matter of time to be 72 hours. Apparently they ran tests on the hound, ran tests on my computer, and ran tests on me too. In the end they calmly said I was free to go.

My arrest made the front page of a newspaper saying I hated dogs, but my release didn’t even get a mention of page 7. The Facebook group ‘dog owners against Jeff’ is still open and active despite my innocence. My inbox is still full of nasty messages that the police say they’ll look into but never do. The only good thing to come from all of this is that Havana was pleased to see me when the animal welfare people eventually returned her.