agonyaunt | Dear Care & Feeding: My Friend's Husband Doesn't Trust My Big Dog

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Dear Care & Feeding: My Friend's Husband Doesn't Trust My Big Dog

Dear Care and Feeding,

A good friend from college is now married with two small kids. When we visit each other (no less than twice a year), there is always tension with her husband, “Paul,” and my big dumb dog, “Scooter.” The kiddos and Scooter all like each other and are very cautiously interested in playing with each other (which only happens with supervision, of course). Every once in a while, something happens and they need a short break from each other: The dog barks at a passing car and the kids get scared, a kid throws a tantrum or drops a toy and the dog gets spooked. Pretty standard interactions, at least as far as my friend and I are concerned.

However, Paul is always on high alert when Scooter is around.
He says weird things directly to him—i.e., “If you bite my baby, I will kill you”—which are obviously meant to put me on notice as if I’m not already keeping a close eye on how my dog treats his children. Paul also gets annoyed that I don’t apologize when Scooter does something that freaks the kids out. I’m not exactly over here keeping score, but I don’t believe he’s ever apologized when his children have done normal, annoying kid stuff like pulling my hair with mac-and-cheese-covered hands.

Keeping Scooter in another room during these visits isn’t an option because he will bark incessantly. My husband is pretty neutral in all this but picks up on the tension and, like me, keeps a close eye on the dog at all times when Paul’s family is around. Our annual visits are so great otherwise, and I’d like to keep them going. What to do?

—Ruh-Roh

Dear RR,

Not all dog owners are “dog people,” but I am going to go out on a limb here and guess that you are, in fact, a dog person. You know, the sort who loves “big dumb dogs” and can hold an entire conversation with a stranger’s doggo in the park. The type of person who says, “Oh, it’s OK, he’s friendly” when their dog sniffs around a stranger, as opposed to “I’m sorry, he’s friendly, are you OK with him being that close?” The gal who is the reason for those “We love your dogs, and we are so sorry, but we cannot allow them inside” signs that are increasingly common outside of dining establishments because they believe it’s just totally normal for Fido to be slobbering around and shit while the rest of us are trying to enjoy our scones at the bakery.

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Dog people are not inherently self- or dog-centered, but they don’t always seem to realize that there’s a whole segment of the population that does not enjoy or care about dogs. They also don’t make the same sort of distinction between pups and people that the rest of us would, which I got from you pointing out that Paul expects apologies for Scooter’s dog-like behavior while not offering them for his little ones’ childlike antics.

It sounds like two things could be at play here:

1) Paul is not a dog person.

2) Paul has some sort of fear-based anxiety related to dogs that is triggered by the sight of your big-ass dog interacting with his children—which could be related to a traumatic event.

To be on the safe side, let’s just operate with the empathy that the latter would require and also take the former into consideration when introducing Scooter to new humans in the future.

Let Paul know that you are keenly aware of the discomfort he experiences when his kids play with your dog, and though while Scooter has no prior history of violence or aggression, you take his concerns seriously. Explain that you and your husband will always keep a close eye on Scooter when he’s around the kids, but that you’ll also work with his wife to design an itinerary that limits their interactions during these special-but-rare visits. It doesn’t matter how much the children like Scooter or how comfortable you and your homegirl are with watching them play; if Paul is this bothered by it, you are one very small scratch away from having these annual get-togethers shelved for good. Respect the man’s feelings. If anyone is going to break down his feelings and convert him to the Church of Doggo, it won’t be you. Happy holidays!

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Dear Paul:

Assuming the LW is describing you accurately, I'm going to be hard on you, because you're the person I sympathize with here. You're the person looking at a large modified wolf cavorting with the small people you would give your life to defend. My heart is with you.

That said, don't threaten the dog. It is the absolute opposite of helping. What if the LW said to your kids, "if you hurt the dog I will feed you to him." You wouldn't enjoy that, right? It would make you feel even more defensive of them. That's how LW feels when you threaten the dog. I know that LW thinks the dog is an equivalent person to your kids and I would definitely be annoyed by that in your place, but for the sake of your spouse and kids we need to try to keep this as peaceable as possible.

I am sending you all the good luck possible that the kids and dog always interact positively and that LW can stop being annoyed with you for not loving the gigantic predator they share their life with. You can be both diplomatic and protective. I have faith in you.

Is Paul threatening the dog out of the blue or in response to something the dog is doing? Because that seems important to know. If Scooter is on his back getting belly rubs with his tongue hanging out when Paul says he'll kill him is a different situation than if Scooter is grumbling and whale eyeing when cornered and receiving attention he doesn't want.

The way he's portrayed here, Paul for sure has dog anxiety and perhaps a fear of big dogs. Maybe he's afraid LW and his wife are so deep in conversation they aren't paying enough attention to the dog and kids.

Stop having hang outs around the dog. Heck, see if you and your friend can do a visit just the two of you while everyone else is doing something else.

If I live to be 100, I will never understand people who take it as a given that their animals are welcome at a gathering. Yes, I know that is also an issue with kids, especially the ones small enough to break things (although I would assume this LW already accounts of that because of her "bug dumb dog"), but to use what my therapist calls a dialectic and acknowledge that yes, there is a double standard, and acknowledge that not wanting what

minoanmiss calls "a large modified wolf" around people too tiny to fend off an attack that an average adult likely couldn't resist and not cognitively developed enough to recognize that the dog has had enough.

It doesn't sound like this is an overnight visit, but whether it is or not, LW is going to have to face something that most parents of young children face on the regular: sometimes, you cannot take 'em with you, and need to arrange for someone else to care for them for however long you're gone.

Yeah, "Keeping Scooter in another room during these visits isn’t an option because he will bark incessantly." got on my nerves no end. A dog that will bark incessantly if there's a closed door is a dog who needs to be better trained and whose owners need training, and a big dog whose owners haven't invested the time into that process is by definition a large, inadequately trained carnivore. I've absolutely known loving, friendly, undertrained big dogs who accidentally harmed people or killed other pets, because when you bring a half-domesticated wolf into your house, saying ooh he's just such a loving snuggleface, aren't you, Buttons McCuteface? doesn't magically make him not a half-domesticated wolf.

I'm not a dog person but I have never once been nervous about a service dog, or any other dog that can sit quietly and not jump on people, because those are dogs who are trained. A dog who barks incessantly is a dog whose owners think it is inherently safe just because they love it.

(ETA: Not everyone needs to have a well-trained dog, obviously. Circumstances differ. But understand that your incessantly barking dog who can't be left alone is a signal to other people who will draw their own conclusions about your priorities.)

Edited 2022-06-10 18:52 (UTC)

I am a dog person, and what you are saying is very nearly 100% correct. My only quibble is this:

an untrained dog and a half-domesticated wolf are not the same thing, and I'm not joking here, thinking that they ARE the same thing is how you get people doing irresponsible wolf-dog hybridization. not that I think you're about to go out and do that, but it's the same misconception of what a dog is, and what a wolf is, at the heart of that -- which is why I'm pushing back on it. It's a bad idea to spread around.

As the person who pretty much introduced that phrasing in the conversation, I do apologize and am edified.

Fair! I knew I was being hyperbolic when I said it but I didn't think about the inevitable conclusion, and you're right, I'll avoid it henceforth.

I have twice shared a home with very large dogs, and was never afraid of any of them, and I had a pretty serious dog phobia as a kid. They were that well-trained. I have also left houses literally trembling, jeans actually soaked by wet noses, because the large dog(s) would not leave me alone.

A dog doesn't even necessarily have to do anything aggressive or harmful to give a person a lifelong anxiety.

My grandparents used to have a German shepherd named Chad who was tame and gentle but a working herd dog, and when my brother was first learning to walk, Chad decided, "This small child needs to be moved to another place," and leaned on him until he fell over -- and my brother has now been nervous about dogs for more than fifty years.

I'm a cat person myself. I think interacting with other people's pets should be optional.

"When we visit each other" -- if that happens in your own house, I'd say you need to put the dog in another room, and if he "barks incessantly," that's a training challenge, no? And if it's at Paul's house, for crying out loud leave the dog at home.

LW has no obligation to put the dog away in another room of its own house when guests come, but in those circumstances, they also have no obligation to go into the house and meet the dog. Maybe Paul's wife isn't receptive to drawing a boundary about that, but it's totally his right as a parent to do so, even though it sounds to me like his trauma is getting in the way of his judgment and all that's needed is supervision. He's still the parent.

I wonder if his wife is thinking "every child needs exposure to dogs!" a common sentiment we've seen in letters, responses, and even comments here. (I also wonder if she's deliberately ignoring her husband's distress, and if so she gets my sternest side-eye at the very least.)

It's totally possible she thinks that.

I would say... it's not TOTALLY off-base, because it's likely everyone will encounter dogs later in life, so it's certainly true that every child can benefit from knowing how to safely interact with dogs, and it's... arguably true? or at least quite likely? that the most effective way to prepare kids for future dog interactions is to like, expose them to dogs safely (and so that they FEEL at least basically secure) with supervision and instruction. Of course the problem with this is that exposing them to dogs BADLY or UNSAFELY or WITHOUT proper instruction is not all that useful and can be harmful - more often by making them afraid of dogs of course, but not without its physical dangers either! It's not actually all that difficult to safely and reponsibly introduce kids to dogs, but it's still something that plenty of people can't seem to manage, and I can't say LW's letter makes me 100% confident that that's what they're doing.

Anyway, even if LW is in fact a good and responsible dog owner and is simply the owner of a type of dog who is, you know, working on the barking but it can't actually/reliably be stopped in those circumstances - and there are plenty of dogs where you just can't, broadly speaking, reliably get them to stop barking; in the case of separation from their bonded people, they might need anything from gradual training to pheromone treatments to intervention from an animal behaviorist (my sister's got a very large high-energy dog with some severe anxiety issues from too-early separation from his litter trauma, and she's doing all of those things with him) - that's reassuring (because less real danger present) but doesn't negate the parent's rights and obligations to try to keep their kids safe. Assuming best intentions from everyone involved, and that the dog actually is not dangerous, the advice given might help Paul. But it still doesn't seem like a bad idea to me to scale back to more limited and controlled interactions between the kids (and parents?) and the dog.

As someone who grew up with dogs and still likes them a lot, even though I don't own them, wow, LW, where did you get your complete inability to have a normal reaction to someone who is clearly afraid of dogs and is not comfortable with them?

Like, I don't enjoy the C&F person's slamming of entitled dog people in the first part of the response, but their suggestions for actually *communicating* with Paul are great. Plz do this, or anything similar that actually takes Paul's spoken and unspoken concerns seriously.

But also, Dear Paul: Use more words.

I don't think people dragging LW are wrong but honestly I find hard to sympathize with Paul after the “If you bite my baby, I will kill you” thing. Reminds me of when I was younger and had a hamster and my grandmother would say things about how she would kill it because rats freak her out so much or something. Not the same situation at all I guess, but I still think these comments are the type you keep to yourself 🤷‍♀️

That's why the first thing I said was that Paul really needs to not say things like that. (Also, my mother wouldn't let me have a guinea pig for the exact same reason -- I do hear you.) But I still can't root against Paul when what he most wants is for the large dog not to injure or frighten his small children.

Yeah after reading the comments and thinking about the whole thing a bit more, I don't think Paul is being unreasonable for worrying. Kids are vulnerable and animals can be unpredictable sometimes. My friend's dog always had been very calm and not aggressive at all, and one day he bit someone out of nowhere, so I get it.

But it's just like you said, this attitude is not doing him any favors.

Not unreasonable for worrying (I was attacked by a neighborhood aggressive dog as a kid — bad-owner situation), but I don’t take kindly to ANYONE threatening to harm or kill someone else’s pets.

The twice-a-year visits sound like they involve travel (and maybe staying at LW’s house), rather than LW taking the dog everywhere.

Okay, my deciding factor is that the kids and the dog are only "very cautiously" (LW's own words!) interested in playing with each other. I'd be a lot more on LW's side if dog and kids were mutually "yay!" about each other. Since both kiddos and doggo are only lukewarm about this, the best solution seems to be to give doggo a day at the doggy day care when the other family come to visit. (Possibly a doggy day care that does some training/socializing, as at least one commenter here suggested that things like "dog will bark incessantly at a closed door" suggests that the dog, and by extension his humans, would benefit from doggo leveling up in the "how to live with the two-legs" department.) (Relatedly, I have this nagging suspicion that LW's description of their pet as a "big dumb dog" can be unpacked as something along the lines of either "I can't be bothered to train my dog" or "I think my dog's minimally-trained antics are fun regardless of their effect on others.")

Edited (Spelling) 2022-06-10 22:44 (UTC)

I have been on all sides of this at various times. Sometimes I have a dog and someone treats the behavior of a normal, well-socialized dog like it is about to eat them/their baby/their cat; sometimes someone's dog is acting unsafe around me/my kids/my chickens/my dog (not my cats, though, my cats are indoor-only); and sometimes, I am the one handling an unsafe dog -- my dog, as my spouse puts it, "loves every person and hates every dog". (What this means functionally is that my dog is perfect on verbal control until another dog exists, and then verbal control becomes unreliable. Which means that outside my front door, I rely on physical control, not verbal, and the spaces with other dogs where she can go are limited. Yes, we're working on it.)

In all of those circumstances, my dog needs to be in my control and to be my responsibility at all times. I need to make that control and responsibility visible. It's my job as the person with the dog to keep interactions polite. Yes, sometimes people do their best to derail that (Paul needs to stop threatening to kill the dog. That is uncool. What the hell, don't threaten to kill people's pets) but largely....it's on me to make sure the dog-nondog interactions are smooth.

I feel like the LW thinks Paul should magically know what dog behavior is normal and what is not, what is threatening and what is not, etc. and that's just....not something people know by magic? Having the convo suggested is a good start but she should also (if these visits are going to include Scooter) make sure that
a) Scooter's training is kept up
b) that she clearly demonstrates TO PAUL, consistently, that Scooter is under verbal control
c) that someone let Paul know what normal dog behavior looks like and what it doesn't.

I suspect that neither a) nor b) are happening, and I'm side-eyeing LW about that, because those are her responsibility (and her husband's). c) _someone_ ought to do, or Paul ought to have dealt with his anxiety himself and educated himself, but whatever, SOMEONE needs to get that done.

As someone who does believe kids need to be safely exposed to animals from a young age, I was with LW until they said that the dog can't be in another room. LW, you are a dog owner who does not have a good understanding of what counts as "well trained" and "safe" in a dog. If you can't close them away from guests and still enjoy a visit, you need to work on training your dog better. Even if you do have full control of it when you're in the same room, you clearly don't actually trust your own dog to be alone without you, and also you let your dog (by barking) control what you do with it. That doesn't mean it's a bad dog, but it's a dog-owner relationships that a parent can be reasonably wary of, because the owner's not the one in charge.

Also either these kids are very young - toddler-sized, to the point that it's absolutely reasonable to be worried about them roughhousing with a large dog, no matter how well-trained - or there's something else going on here. I was from a non-dog household and by elementary school I was comfortable enough with relatives' (variously trained) large dogs that barking at a passing car would not have spooked me enough to need adult intervention; and aware enough to understand that if the dog reacted in a frightening way to a noise as simple as dropping a toy, it was a dog I needed to leave alone. Either the kids are actually too young for his, or LW is severely underplaying just what is going on with the dog when something "freaks the kids out", or LW and her friend need to put in some really proactive work, that they clearly aren't doing to teach the kids how to be safe around the dog, in things like reading dog body language, what's worth freaking out about and when they need to stay calm for the dog. Exposing kids to dogs does not actually mean just throwing them in pens together, it means actively teaching them how to interact safely with dogs and exposing them to adults who know how, and kids who 'freak out' and expect parent reactions with an ordinary dog bark at a car still need very close supervision with dogs. Teaching might also require Dad agreeing to back off, if part of the problem is Dad's anxiety setting off the kids setting off the dog.

(I am not entirely convinced LW knows dog body language well enough to teach this.)

However, LW, it really sounds like a major thing going on in this letter is your friend and her husband having a parenting disagreement and not handling it well. People who are coparenting need to be on the same page about stuff like this, at least when there are guests around, and it sounds like there's no real communication between them about this, just Paul being super tense and mean when the dog's around and his wife brushing it off. LW I would start by going to your friend - the one who is ok with the dog - and explaining to her that Paul's reactions to the dog make her uncomfortable, and you really want everybody to be on the same page about this before the next visit. And then leave the ball in her court to work out with him what the two of them can agree on about dogs and their kids, without you taking sides! (And also talk to your own husband about how you want him to handle this!)

Edited 2022-06-11 13:57 (UTC)

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Dear Care & Feeding: My Friend's Husband Doesn't Trust My Big Dog

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