Dear Carolyn: My partner and I adopted a dog in February. Our friends who have kids rolled their eyes when we said we were doing it as practice for parenthood. (I do understand why, don’t worry.)
I’m actually really worried now because we fight about the dog all the time. Our relationship before we got him was pretty conflict-free, but now there are daily tugs of war about whose turn it is to be on duty, plus some larger stuff like whether to spring for pet insurance. We ended up doing it, but with one person unhappy about it.
I thought this would be a positive experience, but, other than the fact that we love the dog, it has been overwhelmingly negative for our bond with each other. Now I’m scared, genuinely scared about the idea of babies together, which I understand will be harder and more permanent than this.
Is there any chance our situation as doggy parents won’t translate to that? — Practicing
Practicing: Absolutely! But not if you think fighting each other to do things your own way counts as “practicing.”
The healthiest path through dog rearing child rearing anything is the one where you’re humble enough to learn from experience and flexible enough to adapt as you go.
Of course, you and your partner might not be well matched; that could be what your dog is teaching you. (Good boy.)
That’s a premature conclusion, though, if you haven’t given the learning and adapting process a chance yet. Assuming you’re both open to hard analysis, here are some common conflicts to consider:
• One or both of you pushing the work off onto the other. Critter arrives, memo goes unreceived that sleeping in as usual means the other parent is always “on” by default/not enjoying a sleep-in/fatigued to the point of hallucinating. It kills love on contact. Caring for creatures is not about two people doing what each of them thinks 50 percent looks like. It’s two people in for what 100 percent feels like.
• Not communicating. Maybe you both grasp that dog/baby means life has changed and you’re ready to do the work — but if you’re both following your own ideas of what that “should” look like, that can overwork one of you while the other is off … somewhere else … for some reason … again.
• Different goals. Are you sit-stay-heel dog owners, or jumps-on-guests dog owners? (Please say no to the latter, thanks.) Extrapolating this comparison to kids is about 100 more questions, so I’ll spare you.
• Needing to be right. If winning this or that micro-debate becomes, for either of you, more important than your creature’s or partner’s well-being, then you’re not ready for dogs, kids or each other.
• Waiting for things to change that aren’t changing. Type A won’t start relaxing. The relaxed won’t start puckering. The forgetful won’t start remembering. Until they do change, and then that’s who they are no matter how much you wish they’d go back to how they used to be. Point being: You work with, or this won’t work.
If you both believe you are ready — to work hard, to compromise and to accept, love and appreciate each other as is — then try this now together:
Sit down for an actual meeting. Agree on the goal and full scope of the needs. (Example: knows basic commands, three walks a day, dog sitter stays here when we travel, big-box food is fine.) Negotiate and settle conflicting priorities; broad outlines are enough, since you can’t foresee everything. “This is a furbaby” or “love him but still just a dog” or whatever.
