Here in North Notts they use duck, and I've heard it applied to both sexes. Love and pet were both used in Middlesbrough in my childhood.

IIRC there is an atlas showing isoglosses of the distribution of words like this (the snap/bait set is another common regional difference. As I recall it was last published some years ago, but I can't remember who did it(the Institute of Dialect Studies perhaps?).

Mick