J. TODD FOSTER: Sons Are Asking Age-Old Question: Can We Get A Dog?

If you reduce the world to dog or cat people, I guess I’m a dog person.

I am not an animal lover. I’m an animal liker, although I do believe that Gandhi was right when he said societies can be judged based on how they treat animals.

I just happen to like dogs a little more than cats. Dogs love you unconditionally. They give wet, sloppy kisses and don’t wear their emotions on their collars. Cats skulk around on the hunt like your living room is a carpeted jungle. They’ll rub you but seldom lick you.

I’ve been petless for 20 years but have had five dogs and one cat in my lifetime. That’s the extent of my empirical evidence. The only memory of my family’s cat was how he would climb in next to my engine block on winter nights. Maybe as the oldest of two boys and a little more of a night owl than my parents (duh), my car’s engine was always the warmest in the middle of the night.

Unfortunately, it was not a rare occurrence for me to crank up the 350 engine of my ’72 Monte Carlo only to have my fan blade catch a little cat. Imagine the sound and feeling of a 2-by-4 being shoved into an airplane’s propeller.

Relax. The cat always survived, forever cementing my belief in this nine-lives thing. But needless to say, our long-haired cat spent much of his existence with giant bald spots. I don’t recall what finally killed this cat, but I assure you it wasn’t curiosity – or my fan blade.

Our two little boys don’t have a cat fancy. They have taken more of a shine to dogs and are starting to ask that age-old question: When can we get one?

Dogs clearly are on their mind. Over the Christmas holidays, they spent several days with and fell in love with my mother’s Yorkshire terrier. They constantly see the neighbors’ dogs, including the ones who ate the bread crumbs that 6-year-old Tyler took out into the snow last week to feed the few remaining birds that hadn’t flown south for the winter.

Tyler and his 4-year-old brother, Jake, each are starting to broach the issue of when can a canine be mine?

The ultimate decision – as are most in my household – will come down to mommy. She’ll need Job’s patience and Solomon’s wisdom, for she was bitten by a dog as a 3-year-old and still bears the scar. Yet she’s selfless, particularly when it comes to our boys.

My bet is any dog we get won’t be a Jack Russell terrier. Two of those destroyed our carpet under the former homeowner’s regime. Another pair resides up the hill from our house and greets passersby with piercing, cringe-inducing barks.

(Ever notice how a Jack Russell terrier is about the size of a football? Especially if you love to place kick or punt a football? Relax. I would never do that. I’ve just paraphrased Gandhi, for goodness sake.)
No, any dog we get will have to be hearty and possessed with a love of the outdoors. The words “potty trained” will be moot.

I will remain neutral in this discussion and will let the little men in my house make their case. As for me, I am content to have my own pet – a Blackberry.

That’s a handheld electronic device the size of a deck of cards. It occasionally delivers phone calls but mostly signals when I have a new e-mail, which is about 100 times a day. When a new e-mail arrives, the light flashes red and I respond like Pavlov’s Dog – or President Obama, who also has a Blackberry addiction. Sometimes I respond at inappropriate times – such as Mass, for instance.

And like first lady Michelle Obama, my wife has developed a certain disdain for her husband’s Blackberry. With my wife’s size 7 foot, a Blackberry closely resembles a football.

J. Todd Foster is managing editor of the Bristol Herald Courier and can be reached at or (276) 645-2513.