I just read these statistics in the column written by Ed Sayers of the SPCA:
44% purchase souvenirs for their pets when they go on vacation.
37% talk to their pet on the telephone or through an answering machine. (*How would that work, even 
*)
27% have included a provison for their pets in their wills.
and 44% acquired a pet just to keep their other pet company.
Good grief, I’m lamer than I thought. I usually buy the cat a souviner when we go on vacation.
The point of the answering machine is that the pet can hear your voice as the tape records your “message.” We have an answering service, not a machine, so I don’t do this.
I’ll admit it, I guess. I do talk to my dog, Bean, on the phone, and so does hubby when he has to be away for the night. He calls me to say good night, and I’ll put the phone up to the dog’s ear. She’ll listen, and then lick the phone.
Whenever hubby or I leave, and don’t come home on time, the Bean starts searching the house for us. She looks in every room, under the bed, behind the sofa, in the closets and even peers down into the toilet bowl. Why she thinks we may be hiding in the commode is beyond me, but it must make sense in her doggie-logic. After the phone call, however, she must decide that we have become lodged in the phone, and will figure out how to free ourselves eventually, and content, she goes to her bed, and sleeps.
I’d be happy to talk to my dog on the telephone, but she hardly ever calls anymore.
When I was in high school, and I’d be on the phone with my best friend, I used to pick up Fluffy and put her up against the phone and squeeze her (not hard, of course). She’d meow at anything, so my friend would hear her.
Man, she was a great cat. You’d walk into the room, and she’d just start talking to you. Meow, meow, meow. She was a talker!
Do some dogs really respond to the voice on the phone? I tried it once when I was on the phone with the previous owner of our dog, and she (the dog) did not respond to the voice at all.
Your dog is Bean? Well, I heartily approve! 
My parents often ask to talk to my dog Spot when they call. When my mother talks to him, he listens, then licks the phone. When my father talks to him, he listens then bites the phone. But he adores my father. Dogs are weird.
I don’t talk to my pets on the phone. I don’t buy my pets gifts while on vacation. I do advise having more than one pet so they can keep each other company.
I’m forced to. My parents will call me, and then we’ll come to a period of silence… at that point I know the next words will be, “Hey - do you want to talk to the dog?”