No worries! 
Please don’t scare away any potential Buddhists on this thread.
In terms of Buddhism, precepts are set up to safeguard the practitioners’ wisdom-life of the dharmakaya. It works the same way as parents guide their younger generation. From childhood onwards the young ones learn the safety guidelines to ensure their healthy and proper growth to adulthood.
For Buddhist practitioners, precepts are meant to secure and facilitate practitioners’ cultivation path all the way to the ultimate goal. With the protection of properly keeping the precepts, practitioners will not go astray and the Bodhi way will be smoother to proceed.
You mentioned about the story of Chan Master Baizhang 百丈禪師 who expounded the correct Dharma to free a fox, this fox, due to wrong Buddhist teaching in one of its past life when it was a human and monastic and turned into a fox after death for five hundred lifetimes. This is a very impressive tale.
Committing sin of severe false speech mainly applies to the Dharma related subjects. That’s why I am extremely cautious about my writings. Not to mention the monastic Sangha, they are entitled the Sangha Jewel, so they cannot afford giving any wrong Buddhist teachings to the public.
One more thing, your intention was good, so there was no problem at all.
In terms of Buddhism, we have to judge by the intent 根本, implementation 方便 and accomplishment 成已to decide whether one has fully or partly broken a precept or not. Buddhist teachings are very precise to the smallest details, as you can see.
Thank you for giving me a chance to explain more about Buddhist precepts.