Pets that pick up for owners

Using pets to pick up dates is a time-honored tradition.

Or is it?

Many people have heard of this tactic, but few have actually used it.

Quinn Kenehan, a junior early education major, recalled a friend who dealt with a pet-picker-upper, but declined to divulge the account, possibly out of embarrassment for the affected party.

“That’s pretty desperate,” she said.

Of course, a more modernized version of this exists. Leave it to the Internet to update a seemingly common, but realistically unused ploy to make it still somewhat relevant.

DateMyPet.com caters to single pet owners and their animal friends. The site’s tagline, “Date me. Date my pet,” says all you need to know about those who frequent the site. It’s the Internet equivalent of setting a puppy free in a public park, then “stumbling” upon the dog when it approaches a piece of eye-candy.

The site lists hundreds and hundreds of people with dogs, cats, birds, fish, horses, reptiles, snakes and many other animals. One woman on the site, 51-year-old “HeyBetz” owns “horses, dogs, cats, chickens, geese, pigeons, ducks, exotic birds, a hamster and a rabbit.”

It’s easy to see why she hasn’t used her pets at a park to pick up dates; she might start a Jumanji-like stampede.

Mostly women have profiles listed on DateMyPet.com, so pet-loving guys know where to look for a potential match.

Some men don’t like using the Internet to meet women, forcing them to think of other methods. How do they look for dates?

Some men use chickens. But not in the way that users of DateMyPet.com would use chickens. Those people would probably keep the chicken alive and name it.

However, one such enterprising man, Dave Ecker, a pizza delivery driver from Domino’s Pizza, had an interesting idea to impress a girl.

“I used to give free Chicken Kickers to this hot blonde, Amber, from the Dunkin’ Donuts across the street.

I mean, I used to give her like 20 orders of Kickers a week, and she wasn’t even getting fat, which was really surprising,” Ecker said.

So did this cunning plan work?

“Nothing happened with her,” he said.

It appears the days of using pets, cheesy pick-up lines and other tried-and-true tactics are over.

Men and women are getting smarter about these tricks.

But at the same time, they are not on the lookout for other, newer tactics. Those who have mastered the newest methods end up having little or no trouble picking someone up.

Kevin Busteed, a junior accounting major, tells a story similar to something that would happen in the film, “Wedding Crashers.”

He tells of a good-looking girl who was standing outside of 1940 Residence Hall talking to her friends while eating salsa and chips. His friend, Chris, overhears someone call her by her name, which will be changed to protect her identity.

We’ll call her Jennifer.

“Chris walks up to her and [says], ‘Jennifer! Hey, what’s going on?'” Busteed said.

Apparently Chris acted like he knew her from a fraternity party, hoping she would have been at a fraternity party recently.

“He tells this big scheme to get her up to his room,” Busteed said.

“It worked. He ate her chips.”

With remarkably effective tactics such as this one, it’s no wonder why pets aren’t thrown into the equation anymore.

Or, perhaps they are, but people are too embarrassed to admit they use their pets – offline, that is.

Mike Gleeson can be reached at mikegleeson@temple.edu.