The German Shepherd fiasco

We are blessed with a good Darshini near office that serves pretty good coffee. So most evenings, the table people (people who sit around the table! Does it sound similar to Mango people or Aam janta ?) walk down to this place for a caffeine dose. One such eventful day this past week turned out to be highly embarrassing.

We had our cup of coffee and were walking back when we saw an Alsatian along with its owner. I suffer from "Dog fear" or a mild form of Cynophobia. As is my wont, I walked faster than usual to get away from the scene. Aneesh, my colleague, then started THE discussion and said that the dog was a German Shepherd. I immediately jumped and corrected him saying that it was an Alsatian,not a German Shepherd. Everyone knows and recognises an Alsatian right ? I grew up with 2 Alsatians and a Great Dane right opposite my house!!!

Aneesh, though seemed pretty confident. He had numerous Alsatian pics on his phone and all along he thought it was a German Shepherd. I told him confidently that it was an Alsatian. We reached office by then and people went back to what they were doing.

Roughly, an hour later(I wasn't at the table for sometime), they asked me what I thought was the difference between a German Shepherd and an Alsatian. I said :" The German Shepherd has more hair than an Alsatian etc etc." and ended it with "Lets say, that if I have to safeguard my house against robbers, I would go with an Alsatian rather than a German Shepherd". All these guys ( around 6-7 of them) burst into laughter. I wasn't sure why that last statement was so funny! I even remarked that generally, when I crack a joke expecting people to laugh, they don't but somehow this straightforward statement seemed extremely funny!! Just thought that I had found a new , second funny bone!

15 mins passed by and Aneesh , on chat, sent me this link -> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_shepherd and asked me to take a look. In the meantime, all of them literally surrounded me (Thankfully there were only 3 or 4 then). I clicked the link and looked directly at the pic at the right side corner and exclaimed that it was an Alsatian. Aneesh asked me to read the first line and it said :
The German Shepherd Dog (GSD, also known as an Alsatian), (German: Deutscher Schäferhund) is a breed of . I didn't have to read further! Peels of laughter followed.

I joined in too coz' that was the least I could do. There are times when you feel a cake has been smashed on your face or an egg has been thrown on your head or that you have jumped into a pool of crap and this was one of them! It then dawned on me as to why they were laughing earlier when I told them about the house guarding rule!

Flashback : Apparently one of them told Aneesh to check Wikipedia as soon as they got back and when they got to know this, they decided to play on and obviously, they had a fantastic time! Later I found out that there were 2 Alsatians and a Golden Retriever opposite my house. Damn! What foolishness!

Moral of the story: Just because you are right , doesn't mean the other one is wrong! And that I haven't found a second funny bone as yet!