Olivia: You know, having a puppy really works on chicks.
Lucas: I've heard that
Olivia: Not on me though.
Lucas: Really? Because the whole reason I adopted Bella was to impress Olivia from the maintenance department.
Olivia: That seems to be your motivation for everything lately, I've noticed.
Lucas: Must be working if you've been doing all this noticing.
Lucas: I've heard that
Olivia: Not on me though.
Lucas: Really? Because the whole reason I adopted Bella was to impress Olivia from the maintenance department.
Olivia: That seems to be your motivation for everything lately, I've noticed.
Lucas: Must be working if you've been doing all this noticing.
This trope is about the fact that women seem to be naturally fond of animals, and tend to show more interest in a man who has one or more. Men with a cute puppy may take the animal to a local dog park, farmer's market or outdoor cafe patio, and use the animal as an attention-grabber or conversation starter. While the cliche animal is a dog, all sorts of animals have been depicted as "chick magnets" in stories.
With online dating apps, some men pose with cute puppies in their profile photos to attract interest (however, beware of being "dogfished", which is when a person borrows someone's animals for their profile photos).
Compare Pick Up Babes With Babes, Cuteness Proximity. Any kind of Animal Lover (such as Kindhearted Cat Lover and Canine Companion) can get this.
Examples:
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Advertising
- An ad for... something... oh yeah, Mike's Hard Lemonade, has some men running a beagle puppy rental booth for this purpose.
Anime & Manga
- In Pokémon: The Series, Brock would often use this trope in his several attempts to get the girl, especially if it involves a Pokémon he has. And naturally, it ends in failure. One notable episode, "Hassle in the Castle", features a woman named Dr. Anna who uses a Zubat to help her do medical diagnosis scans with its Supersonic move. Brock eagerly shows her his Zubat and its Supersonic move, and then soon declare his intention to stay wit her as professional medical team. Unfortunately for Brock, his Zubat evolved into Golbat, which makes its Supersonic scream too powerful for Dr. Anna's medical practices, thus forcing Brock to leave with a broken heart.
Comic Strips
- After noticing that the women around him all liked birds, Jon of Garfield slammed an ice cream cone into Garfield's face to look like a beak, and asked a passerby if she wanted to pet his parrot. She asked if it talked, and the strip ended with Garfield thinking "The stories I could tell, lady."
- There's another early comic where Jon takes Garfield on a walk through the park, hoping to invoke this trope. After Garfield half-strangles one lady with his leash and traumatizes another's dog, Jon decides "back to the drawing board".
- While on a date
◊, Jon reveals to Liz that he keeps a picture of Garfield as a kitten in his wallet, and Liz becomes enamored enough with Jon to cover his face in Lipstick Marks. This is largely justified, since Liz works as veterinarian.
- A strip from The Far Side had a man test this theory, by taking a pet alligator for a walk in the park. It ended up eating another woman's poodle.
- Dilbert once tried this. His cute animal being Dogbert, it obviously didn't work.
- A storyline in Mary Worth had Wilbur Weston, dumped by Estelle for yelling at her cat, have a conversation with Saul Wynters in which Wynters mentioned that he and his girlfriend had bonded over their dogs. Cue Wilbur getting a French bulldog from a shelter, expecting it to be a chick magnet. The closest he gets is a woman who explains to him all the things he doesn't know about dogs, but realises he's still hung up on Estelle. Then Estelle takes him back, and also adopts the dog so he doesn't have to look after it, so ... yay?
Films — Live-Action
- In Four Against the Bank, the wife of one of the four German bank robbers, Freddie (Alexandra Maria Lara), advises the only one of the robbers who isn't suspected by anti-bank robbery cop Elizabeth Zollner (Antje Traue), Max (Matthias Schweighöfer), to take the pose with a cat for his profile photo on the dating app used by Zollner so the chances to hook Zollner (and make her believe someone else committed the robbery) will be greater, in addition to having him pretend that he works at a kitchen soup. It works.
Literature
- Referenced in A Dog's Way Home when Lucas jokingly says he adopted Bella to attract a woman he likes (who ends up his eventual girlfriend and later his wife).
- In A Dog's Purpose, Wendi's boyfriend buys her a puppy on a whim to make her like him more. It doesn't turn out well for Bear. Like many dogs bought without much thought, Bear's owners weren't prepared for a puppy and couldn't commit to him (Wendi wasn't even allowed to have dogs in her housing). As a result, Bear is later given to Wendi's mother and abusive stepfather, where he is kept chained in the yard under minimal conditions until his owners finally decide to throw him out onto the streets.
Live-Action TV
- How I Met Your Mother: Barney harnesses the power of a ridiculously cute teacup pig to get women into his apartment.
- He later attempts to fill in the "wingman" role of his no-longer-single friend with a dog he meets and names "Brover". Numerous dog puns involving "bones" and "chasing tail" ensue. Then it turns out the dog was lost and belonged to an attractive woman, who ends up acting as the last chick attracted by the magnet.
- Road Rules season 7 "Latin America": Abe Ingersoll used Menudo, the group's pet Chihuahua, to meet girls.
- Will & Grace, Jack used Will's dog to pick up guys.
- One episode of Top Gear had Hammond doing an experiment regarding which was a better "girl magnet", a flashy sports car or a retriever puppy (named Killer). The puppy won by a mile. All who approached fell under the spell of the Cuteness Proximity and didn't even notice the car.
- Frasier has a gender-flipped version with Roz who returns from walking her dog and admits she was trying to get the attention of an attractive guy at the dog park. Apparently there were several other women with dogs of their own trying to do the exact same thing. On another occasion she gets a phone number while walking her dog and Eddie and discusses the trope with Frasier.
Frasier: Is that why you people have pets? To get dates?
Roz: No, but it's a plus. I've never met one person who didn't get at least one date through their pet.
Frasier: Well, meet me! Four years of high school and not a single encounter generated! (darkly) Stupid fish. - In Entourage Johnny and Turtle use their dog to meet women dog-owners in a doggie park.
- In the final episode of The Big Bang Theory Raj gets Bert to look after his dog saying it is a chick magnet.
- Friends:
- Subverted with Ross' pet monkey Marcel. Joey assures Ross that the monkey's sweet little face will make his date melt, but instead Marcel grabs her hair causing her to freak out until Ross can distract him with a banana.
- Joey hits it off with the stripper hired for Ross' bachelor party when she starts cooing over Joey's pet chicken and duck.
Music
- The Kingston Trio song "Oh, Yes, Oh!" presents this trope as advice to "soldiers in their quest for girls."
A sweet young maiden passing by, (oh, yes, oh!) saw my smile but made no reply, (a good long time ago).The puppy fixed his gaze upon her, (oh, yes, oh!) Two steps more and she was a goner, (a good long time ago).
Video Games
- According to party banter in Dragon Age: Origins – Awakening, the tabby kitten Ser Pounce-A-Lot serves as this for Anders.
Oghren: Women are drawn to you when you play with that cat.
Anders: Like moths to a flame. Women like it when men show affection for small, fuzzy, defenseless beings. Like you.
Web Comics
- In BOO! It's Sex, Christine first meets her crush Ansh when he's running a stand with therapy dogs. She comes over to pet the dog, and the two strike up a conversation.
- Stand Still, Stay Silent: An implied and downplayed version. The Denmark portion of the Just Before the End Distant Prologue focuses on a man from mainland Denmark who is on a ferry to drop his cat off at his sister's place on Bornholm island before an important business meeting. His presence at the meeting gets compromised when sudden travel restrictions mean the boat won't be making its return trip. The story ends with him getting fired by his Mean Boss over the phone, and getting cheered up by the boat waitress who had previously chewed him out for his initial rude reaction to the news of the travel restriction. What is shown of their conversation includes the waitress noticing his cat and calling him cute. The Danish member of the main cast is that pair's great-grandson.
- In Urban Underbrush, Blair rejects the notion of letting the rabbits get some girls on the grounds it attracts a poor quality.
Western Animation
- Johnny Bravo tries this by buying an emu. Goes about as well as expected.
- In an episode of American Dad!, Steve wants to get a dog for this purpose. His dad brings him home an old, weak, dying, 20-year old dog. Steve reluctantly takes it, and gets mocked by some passing girls. However, he sees this as a positive since a girl "noticed him".
- Gender-flipped in the Phineas and Ferb episode "Mispercieved Monotreme", where Candace appropriates her brothers' pet platypus after her crush Jeremy mentions that "you can tell a lot about a person by how they treat animals" and invites her to his charity pet-wash.
- Teen Titans: Beast Boy tried a form of this when he sees two girls giving attention to a cute dog and turns into a dog hoping for the same treatment. However, since his dog form is green and smells like old pizza, he didn't get the intended response.
Real Life
- Actor Michael Kenneth Williams has a mini pinscher named Brooklyn, who he once identified in an interview as "a lady-magnet".
- One Cracked article, "The Science of Sexy: 5 Tips To Make Yourself More Attractive", invokes this trope as one of the five tips, complete with Ho Yay, Have I Mentioned I Am Heterosexual Today?, and If It's You, It's Okay, all rolled into one thanks to the apparently-male author's gay crush on Bradley Cooper.
- a 2019 article in The Guardian warned against the misleading dating app practice of "dogfishing", in which men pose with cute animals in their profile photos in order to woo women, except that they borrowed the animals for the snapshot. If you hope to meet that cuddly puppy in the photo you may be disappointed, since it belongs to some random person at the dog park. note
