Your dog may help you click with others

Steve Fruzzetti is 35, single, has a good sense of humor, and owns his own business. But let's ask his soul mate, Bristol, how she would describe him:

''He's very affectionate, and he likes to cuddle. He has a very dry sense of humor. Sometimes I don't get his jokes." And his hobbies? ''We walk a lot. He says he wants to take me camping, but we'll see. He's always working. Every weekend we go to the dog park or swimming."

Bristol is a year-old female golden retriever.

Kim Feinberg is a sales rep at Wearguard with a mass of dark curls and a Colgate smile. Here's how her 3-year-old mastiff mix, Lucy, describes her: ''She's very outgoing, funny, kind. Loving. . . . She's pretty, or at least that's what she tells me to tell her at least once a day! But hey -- what can I say -- she takes care of me!"

What else, Lucy? ''She loves to walk -- we walk all the time. Ideal match must be nice to me!!!"

The last person Feinberg dated did not like dogs. Out he went. (The guy, not the dog.)

Tired of the other online dating services, Fruzzetti and Feinberg began using animalattraction.com, which Dan Cohen started in the summer of 2003. Cohen, who grew up in Westwood, where his parents and siblings still live, moved to D.C. to attend George Washington University and still lives there. One day he was walking down the street and saw a restaurant with a lively vibe. He saw why: There were dogs on the patio with their owners. He went in to explore.

''I was told I had just walked into doggy happy hour," says Cohen, 37, who owns a rottweiler/shepherd mix named Buddy. ''It was just the greatest thing. The people who seemed to be connecting best were the people who had dogs between them." Cohen, who earned his MBA at Northwestern, did some research and learned that the pet products and service industry in the United States totaled $32 billion, much bigger than either the candy or toy business.

He also discovered that there were 40 million single pet owners in the country. Then it clicked: Animals + love = big business. Why not create a dating site for animal lovers? They'd have an instant connection through their pets. The website features photos of the humans, plus their pets, and ''interviews" with both. Membership is free; Cohen makes money from the ads he sells on the site.

''It's a lot of fun, and people wind up sharing a lot more information when they're talking about themselves in the third person," Cohen says. You can search for those in your geographic area by gender and age. Soon, he says, you'll also be able to search by pet: ''Show me women who have cats in the Boston area," or ''Show me guys with black labs anywhere in the country."

Fruzzetti would love that. ''Not that I'm shallow or anything," he says, ''but I couldn't date someone with an ugly dog. It doesn't really matter what the person looks like. I do look at her picture first, but then I scroll down and make sure she's got a decent dog."

When he signed up last year, he submitted photos and profiles of both himself and his dog. Under ''What are the coolest or funniest things about your pet?" he wrote: ''Bristol likes to sleep on her back curled almost in a circle."

In short time, he met someone with a yellow lab. On their first date, they took a 3-mile walk with their dogs, who got along great. Every Saturday they'd get together and walk their dogs. ''For me, it makes an easy date: You get together and walk your dog someplace nice. You can have a good conversation and really get to know the person," says Fruzzetti. The walks turned into dinner, which blossomed into romance. They dated for three months before they broke it off (not their dogs' faults, he stresses).

A few weeks ago, he e-mailed another woman on animalattraction.com, and met her and her shepherd mix at a Sharon park. ''Our dogs got along great, and there were tons of other dogs there to play," he says. In fact, the dogs had better chemistry than the humans. ''It wasn't an instant spark," says Fruzzetti, who owns a dog-walking and play group business in Milton. ''But I got very attached to her dog."

Feinberg has her dog, Lucy, in doggy day care, makes homemade dog cookies, and has a calendar that features Lucy's picture for every month. Feinberg has met men while walking her dog and has dated a few of them. ''It's important we have the same obsession," she says. Since she doesn't have a yard, Feinberg, 33, walks Lucy for two hours every day after work.

On her profile, she describes Lucy this way: ''She's a total chick! Sometimes she's having a blast, other times she's kinda moody! :) But she is a total lover!:)"

The people Feinberg has met on the website can relate. ''Everybody's just as into spending a Saturday going for a walk at the beach with their dog as I am, and they don't think it's weird," she says. Still, the men she's met online have lived far from Boston: ''I'm not going to go to Vermont to meet someone with a dog. And my first contact was someone in Missouri."

Bob Jones is a retired widower who once took his black lab, Drambuie, around the country in a 30-foot motor home. He lives in Bedford and has met a few women on the pet site, but no one serious. ''Everybody has the same feeling. If you don't like my dog, or my cat, don't bother talking to me. I love my dog. He's my family. He's it."

Animalattraction.com has chat rooms, message boards, pet photo contests, and something called ''Happy Tails," where couples who have connected through the site, and their pets, tell all (or most). Jones, 61, goes into the chat rooms every night, talking about everything from what to do about a dog who won't quit barking to the cute things their pets did that day.

Though many of the animal lovers who go online are cat and dog lovers, there are all sorts of exotic pet owners also looking for a soulmate. ''Are there any ferret fanatics out there?" asked one man, who then got a flurry of reponses. Said one: ''I'm owned by one large ferret. . . . I'd love to have more but for now, having him, a snake, a water dragon, a bird, a cat, and a dog is enough for me."

Another query: ''Just curious, are any women out there interested in reptiles and/or arachnids?"

Indeed, several were. Arachdude7 and Blue_Russian2004 went on to discuss the relative merits of blue-tongue skinks and western hognoses (best to know ahead of time if your date is into three-foot-long snakes).

Another woman wrote that she owns a 6-month-old bearded dragon named Sargon. ''I find beardies to be very docile and curious little dudes. I can't do the spider thing, though. They creep me out!"