A tweet by a famous musician last week put a Washington-area dog into the spotlight for a few days.

Matchbox Twenty lead singer Rob Thomas used his Twitter account to let his 408,000 followers know about a dog in Washington that had been dropped off at Beaufort County Animal Control.

Thomas learned about Pfeizer, a 16-year old Labrador retriever and shared the information with his faithful followers.

The Grammy-award-winning singer’s Tweet was retweeted 134 times. That led to hundreds of calls and emails from around the country and Canada to Beaufort County Animal Control about Pfeizer.

Animal control officials were amazed and even shocked over the amount of calls and emails they received about the dog.

“That is out of the norm for our facility, sometimes we’ll get 10 to 15 responses, but that was just nuts,” said Todd Taylor, chief of Beaufort County Animal Control “It (Twitter) spreads the word quick.”

Thomas, who didn’t know the entire story of why the dog was dropped off, voiced some strong words about the former owners.

The former owners, however, could no longer take care of Pfeizer because of the expensive medical bills.

Taylor said he was glad the owners dropped him off at their office and not on the side of the road to die like so many dogs he sees already.

Despite Thomas’ lack of information for the reason Pfeizer was dropped off, it’s a good thing he used social media for good. He used a powerful medium to get across information about dog that needed a good home and medical care.

With social media’s continued growth, users should take a step back before getting upset and learn the situation. Many social media firestorms are started because of information isn’t shared correctly — it is a powerful tool to share information, use it wisely.