Dad Forced to Buy Puppy After Daughter Gets 100K Retweets, Says 'It’ll Be Great'

It's a tale as old as time: girl meets dog, girl tweets about dog, 100,000 strangers retweet dog, girl gets dog.

This is what happened when 17-year-old Clara Foster asked her dad how many retweets she would need to get for him to get her a puppy. He initially set the number at 1 million, but reduced his benchmark to a more "realistic" goal of 100,000 retweets, which Clara reached today.

We called Clara and her dad to talk about what is going to happen now that she's reached her goal number, and the enduring life lesson she's learned: to get what you want, just ask strangers to retweet it.

i would highly appreciate some retweets princess claraMarch 3, 2016

MOTHERBOARD: So, you got 100,000 retweets, is your dad going to let you get a puppy?
Clara Foster: Yes! He is following through and I am getting my puppy.

Are you excited?
I am so excited!

Is the puppy you're getting the puppy in the original tweet?
Yes, that puppy is from my cousin's litter. They were fostering a beagle while their friend was deployed, and the beagle made puppies with their springer spaniel, so the puppy is from that litter. The problem now is I don't know when I'll be able to get the puppy because I am in Houston and the puppy is in Oklahoma.

Why did you first decide to ask for a puppy? Do you have any dogs now?
I had a dog until we had to put her down a couple weeks ago, so I really wanted a puppy because I have no pets right now.

What made you think to post it on Twitter?
I've seen people do it before, but nobody I saw ever had to get 100,000. That is a huge number. My dad initially said I had to get a million retweets, and I said that is crazy, so I asked if we could do 100,000. I still didn't even think it would get that, but it blew up I guess.

Did you get any negative attention as it started to gain steam?
A lot of people were being rude for no reason on the internet. Everyone was getting mad over things that weren't true, saying I would get this puppy for a week and be tired of it. People were hating and it was silly, because I am going to get this puppy and love the puppy and be really happy.

Is your dad a big Twitter user?
He has a Twitter, but he doesn't know how to use it very well. He tweeted today that he had given up and I'm going to get a puppy. I think he had an idea of what it was but he definitely didn't think I was going to get that many he thought he was just making me happy so I'd stop asking about it.

Do you know what you're going to name the dog?
The dog is already named Ollie and I think I'm going to keep that name because it's cute.

After hearing Clara's dad Tony chuckling in the background, she passed him the phone so I could ask him about his puppy commitment.

What did you think when your daughter first asked you about this?
Tony Foster: We have had a number of animals over the years, and we had one pass away recently who was the fourth one who's passed away in the past six years or so, so the house felt really empty and Clara was asking for a puppy.

My wife and I were hesitant because she was going off to college next year and we thought we don't know if we wanted a puppy. Then she asked me how many tweets to get a puppy so I came up with a random number of a million, and then lowered it to 100,000. A number of little media outlets got a hold of it and it went crazy. It's been less than two weeks, she was getting 10,000 retweets a day at one point.

Are you happy to be holding up your end of the deal?
I'm also a dog lover, so I'm going to be thrilled that she's getting the dog. It'll be a welcome addition to the family.

Did you expect her to actually get that many retweets?
I'm not really tech savvy, I'm not in the Twitterverse that often, so it was interesting to follow and see it happen as it did. My original number was a million, I had no idea what the number of retweets would mean, or how it would get to that point. I had no idea the vastness of that whole process, it kind of blew me away.

Have you learned anything from this process?
I will never use number of retweets as a way to make decisions again. I don't think I'll play that game again. But we are very happy she's getting the puppy, it'll be great.