Do presidential candidates’ pets affect your voting decision?

I ran onto an interesting story about the 2008 presidential candidates, talking about the pets they have. Seems, the article says, that Sen. John McCain wins the honors as owner of the most potential "First Pets" in this race -- he has four dogs, a cat, a parakeet, some fish. The article says he used to own a ferret and once an iguana.

Former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee has three dogs, putting him in second place.

The Democrats are lagging behind. Sen. Hillary Clinton has a dog; Sen. Barak Obama has no pets, though he's promised his two daughters a puppy if they move into the White House. Seems odd, to me anyway, the way the story has that -- is Obama REALLY sort of holding the daughters' potential puppy "hostage" to a potential win in the presidential race? (Does that sentence have enough potential? Probably.)

I guess an interesting question for discussion might be this: How does your knowledge of candidates' pets and pet ownership -- or lack of pets -- affect your vote? Or does it? Tell us, please.

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