Families, Kids and Dogs—
A Recipe for Laughter

These 24 quotes are about families, kids and dogs. Some of them are a hoot, while others are a bit more reflective on what it means to have a dog in the family.

When he came up two days short, he didn't get a dog. That was harsh. It was wise, but harsh.

Chris Affleck, on how she dealt with her son Ben Affleck wanting a dog as a boy. (She made him walk an imaginary dog for seven days.)

Every boy should have two things: a dog, and a mother willing to let him have one.

Anonymous

Every boy who has a dog should also have a mother, so the dog can be fed regularly.

Anonymous

There is only one smartest dog in the world, and every boy has it.

Anonymous

What are little boys made of?
Frogs and snails,
And puppy dog tails.
That's what little boys are made of.

Anonymous

The dog was created specially for children. He is the god of frolic.

Henry Ward Beecher, Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit

A dog teaches a boy fidelity, perseverance, and to turn around three times before lying down.

Robert Benchley

Dachshunds are ideal dogs for small children, as they are already stretched and pulled to such a length that the child cannot do much harm one way or the other.

Robert Benchley

The ideal age for a boy to own a dog is between forty-five and fifty.

Robert Benchley

I have consolidated all the Erma Bombeck dog quotes here.

Give a boy a dog and you've furnished him a playmate.

Berton Braley

For me a house or an apartment becomes a home when you add one set of four legs, a happy tail, and that indescribable measure of love that we call a dog.

Roger Caras

A house is not a home until it has a dog.

Gerald Durrell

When I go home, I play with my baby dolls and strollers and stuffed animals, pretend like they're real dogs.

Dakota Fanning, child actress

I was three years old. I was messing with my grandparents' dog in Las Vegas, and he decided to pick me up by my head and run around the backyard with me.

Brian Austin Green

Our house was always filled with dogs... They helped make our house a kennel, it is true, but the constant patter of their filthy paws and the dreadful results of their brainless activities have warmed me throughout the years.

Helen Hayes

Every time I told my cocker spaniel, Taffy, my very first dog, that we were going for a walk, she would launch into a celebratory dance that ended with her racing around the room, always clockwise, and faster and faster, as if her joy could not be possibly contained. Even as a young boy I knew that hardly any creature could express joy so vividly as a dog.

Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson

The dog of your boyhood teaches you a great deal about friendship, and love, and death: Old Skip was my brother. They had buried him under our elm tree, they said—yet this was totally true. For he really lay buried in my heart.

Willie Morris, My Dog Skip

A man down in Texas heard Pat on the radio mention the fact that our two daughters would like to have a dog. And believe it or not, the day before we left on this campaign trip we got a message from Union Station in Baltimore, saying they had a package for us. We went down to get it.

You know what it was? It was a little cocker spaniel in a crate that he sent all the way from Texas.... And our little girl, Tricia, the six-year-old, named it Checkers. And you know the kids love the dog and I just want to say this, right now, that regardless of what they [the Press] have to say about it, we are going to keep it.

Richard M. Nixon, speaking on TV about the dog given to him after he was accused of accepting improper gifts. 

This speech later became known as the Checkers speech, and saved Nixon's political career. It also made Checkers one of the most famous dogs in political history. 

The body of Checkers was exhumed three years after Nixon died, and moved to the Nixon Library grounds, near the graves of the late president and his wife.

The only one of our children who has not disillusioned us.

Carlotta O'Neill, on Blemie, her and husband Eugene's dog

The best way to get a puppy is to beg for a baby brother—and they'll settle for a puppy every time.

Winston Pendleton

My friendship with Mitzi was like the friendship that many children have with their pets. My mother and father thought it was "good for me" to have a dog for a companion. Well it was good for me, but it was only many years after she died that I began to understand how good it was, and why.

Fred Rogers (Mr. Rogers)

In his grief over the loss of a dog, a little boy stands for the first time on tiptoe, peering into the rueful morrow of manhood. After this most inconsolable of sorrows there is nothing life can do to him that he will not be able somehow to bear.

James Thurber

Many who have spent a lifetime in it can tell us less of love than the child that lost a dog yesterday.

Thornton Wilder

No symphony orchestra ever played music like a two-year-old girl laughing with a puppy.

Bern Williams