Four Legged Friends: Should Soap Characters Have More Pets

Soap characters experience everything real people do. And so, so much more. You know one thing they don’t experience much? (No, not going to the bathroom. No, not looking smashing every second of the day.)

Pet ownership. Soap opera characters have children. Some have so, so many children. We’re looking at you, General Hospital’s Sonny (Maurice Benard), The Bold and the Beautiful’s Eric (John McCook), and Days Of Our Lives Stefano (Joseph Mascolo). But, not so much with the offspring of a furry kind.

Should that change? Here’s what almost 35,000 animal lovers said!

Show Me Some Fuzzy Love
It was surprisingly close, as 51% of the audience voted thumbs up on a pet influx. Perhaps they’re the ones who remember GH’s romance of Foster and Annabelle (both dogs) from the early 1990s.

Or, when Lucy (Lynne Herring) had a pet duck, Sigmund, at around the same time. Or maybe you’re still missing Zapato, the dog Victor (Eric Braeden) had on The Young and the Restless when a brain tumor briefly turned him into a nice guy.

Then, there was BB earlier this century, where Samantha (Sydney Penny) weeping endlessly about her dead pooch, actually had to do with the daughter she’d been forced to give away. It ended with her reuniting with said daughter, and Sam’s lost love Hector (Lorenzo Lamas). So, yay, pets!

No, Thanks, I’m Allergic
Then again, an almost equal 49% are not at all enamored by the idea. You are already mourning long-time favorites who, like the Quartermaines on GH, have been reduced to walk-ons and off-screen babysitters or, like YR’s Paul (Doug Davidson), erased all together.

You want the precious available airtime to go to them, not some drooling mutt or chatty bird. What was with that GH lizard again?