They laugh alike they walk alike, at times they even talk alike.

You can lose your mind, when dogs and owners are two of a kind.

It’s true, what they say, some dogs really do look like their owners.

Perhaps they aren’t identical cousins like in the famous 1960s “Patty Duke Show,” but the traits are there — hair color, face shape, build, personality.

Take LeAnn Preiss and Chick as exhibit A.

LeAnn, a Vidalia native and Trinity graduate, is tall, sleek and slender. She has petite facial features, and gorgeous red hair.

Chick, her 3 and a half-year-old rat terrier, could fit the exact same description.

Chick is taller than most rat terriers. Her legs are the vast majority of her body. Her face is small with fast-moving lines. And her fur is red, the same shade as LeAnn’s.

But the similarities don’t end there, LeAnn’s mother Cherry Moon said.

It’s the priss the “girls” really share.

Chick’s favorite position is seated in her mother’s lap with her paws crossed squarely, one over the other.

The poise of both LeAnn and Chick is apparent, and it matches well with the slick physiques.

“We’ve always compared her with (Chick),” Moon said. “It’s the hair, the long legs and the personality.”

And LeAnn can’t help but agree. She sees it too.

“(Chick) is spoiled,” LeAnn said. “She lives in the house and sleeps in the bed under the covers. I’m sure her personality has to do with the way we treat her.”

LeAnn, a schoolteacher, now lives in Hattiesburg with her husband D.J.

Chick was as early married-life choice.

“We got her two months after we got married,” LeAnn said. “We got a house because of her.”

Chick may or may not know she looks like her mom, but she sure wants to be near her.

“(Chick) actually cries when she leaves her,” Moon said. “She’s a momma’s girl.”

Daddy’s boy

At the Natchez home of Dave and Diane Forrest things operate a little differently.

Snoopy, their 3-year-old pooch, would prefer to have nothing to do with Diane.

Perhaps it’s Dave’s beard that makes Snoopy feel right at home sitting in Dave’s lap.

After all, Snoopy knows a little about beards; he has one too.

Since Dave is in a wheelchair, man and man’s best friend share a special seat. The chair belongs to Snoopy too, or at least he thinks so.

“They sit like that all the time,” Diane said as she watched the dog curl up against her husband’s stomach. “He’ll just hop up in his lap and sit there.”

Dave sometimes suffers spasms from injuries that paralyzed him, but Snoopy knows just what to do.

“If I’m sick he’ll come lay in my lap,” Dave said. “He wants me to feel better.”

“He calls him his little nurse,” Diane said.

That may be a hard pill for Diane — a nurse by trade — to swallow.

“They are both spoiled rotten,” she said.

And that’s the personality they share. Both like to sit by a heater, both like midnight snacks — chicken or cheese for Snoopy — and both like the other’s companionship.

“All the time (Dave) says they are twins,” Diane said.

Twins, or triplets?

Margie Pullen has a house full of animals. But the ones that greet you — or shall we say merely meet you — are the dogs.

Pullen’s two Chihuahuas don’t like strangers, and they’ll bark until any guests not on their list hit the highway.

Both dogs are short and squatty, but it’s Polly that really looks like Margie.

This time, it’s not the facial features that the dog and owner really share, but more the demeanor.

Polly won’t get too close. She let’s you pet her when she wants to be petted, as Margie said.

And that’s not entirely unlike Margie, who manages the local Riverbreeze Apartments.

“I’m about half hateful too,” Margie jokingly said. “I don’t want people messing with me either.”

Polly came from Texas. She was a friend in a sad time after Margie’s husband died.

“She was the sickest, scrawniest little thing you’d ever seen,” Margie said.

But a new daily regime of two packages of chicken thighs a week did the trick.

Last year, Polly won best costume at the Humane Society’s annual fundrasier, Bark in the Park. And of that, Margie is proud.

“This is my little love right here,” she said.