The dog was already on the scene when Jane and her partner got together – this was a man-plus-dog package. But Jane, a Brit living in Barcelona, didn’t foresee the problems. “I’m not a dog person, but I’m not averse to them,” she says, speaking to me from Catalonia. “I innocently thought they were a cute addition to one’s life, not something that would take priority over holidays, nights out, plans to live together as a couple, or where that could be. His dog was the source of all our tensions.”
The dog – medium-sized, female, part husky, part something else – was a prickly, difficult character. She barked a lot, couldn’t be left with others, and would destroy soft furnishings, and so wasn’t welcome in Jane’s tastefully furnished apartment. “It mattered less with his crappy sofa, but I paid €2,000 for mine, I did not want it ripped to pieces.”
But the dog seemed like his number one priority. “Like many people with pets they love very much, their lives adapt to their animals to a degree I find insane,” says Jane. “For example, I have a friend who has moved flats several times because her cats didn’t like the apartments. I think your animals should adapt to your life, not the other way around.”
Jane and her partner, now ex, rarely got to spend the night together. “The dog was too much of a problem for us to sleep in the same bed.” And they could hardly go on holiday, though they did once go somewhere dogs were allowed. “There was no other room for the dog to be in, so it had to stay in the room with us.” Which proved too much. “I realised I’d never spent the night in a room with a dog, with the constant fretting and whining – and the farts. I was shocked. Do people just ignore it because they love the dog, or do they not smell it?”
Was the dog the only reason the relationship didn’t work, I wonder. “I was never sure if the dog was a kind of cipher for ‘I don’t want to commit,’” Jane says. “We couldn’t move in together – the big issue was that we couldn’t see a way to cohabit and have a dog. I did accuse him of choosing the dog over me.”
Jane was one of many people I spoke to about how pets can get in the way of a relationship or friendship. There was also Hilda Burke – London-based psychotherapist, couples counsellor, as well as human companion to a greyhound named Bran. From Burke’s experience, a pet is usually a positive thing in a relationship. “A mutual vessel for love and affection, something to bond over.”
Issues can arise if, as with Jane’s ex, a pet is already in place. “Kind of like a kid from a previous relationship,” Burke says. “So if you like the person enough, even if you’re not naturally a pet person, you’ll accept it.” She expands on the children parallel. “It’s similar to kids, you know – different attitudes towards how a pet should be trained, how it should behave, how long it should be left alone and whether that is cruel. Weight and feeding can be a source of conflict. You know, ‘Our pet is overweight’; ‘Don’t be horrible, he loves his food.’”
And guess which of those people the pet is going to favour: the treat-giver or the one trying to keep it at a healthy weight? Favouritism and jealousy might creep into the dynamic, too.
It is also about different cultures and backgrounds. “I was brought up in Ireland 30 years ago, and it was very much: dogs are outdoor creatures, they’re animals, not part of the family,” says Burke.
Gradually, over those 30 years, in Ireland and elsewhere, dogs have snuck in, out of the cold, into the living room, then sometimes, sneakily, upstairs. And this, says Burke, represents a change in attitudes towards pets, the way people treat and interact with them, their role in the household. “Is it like a substitute baby? Is it one of the family, with equal rights?”
In a study by Pew Research Center last year, more than half of pet owners said not only do they consider their pets to be part of the family, but as much a part of it as the human members. “Obviously if both parties in a relationship feel the same way, there’s no conflict. But if one is coming from a very different value system, then that could be a source of conflict,” Burke adds.
I’m guessing from her WhatsApp avatar – a picture of Bran the greyhound with his head on a cushion – that she no longer adheres to the value system of her upbringing in Ireland? She laughs. “I’ve deviated from that! I always like to stuff my dogs into my bed.”
The same is true for Laura in London, whose date had a bit of a shock when she brought him home for the first time. “We went up to the bedroom as things progressed during the evening. I tried leaving my dog in her crate, but she was howling, ruining the mood, so I let her out hoping we could continue undisturbed. As we were having sex for the first time, my date leaned down to whisper in my ear. I anticipated something romantic but, instead, he said, ‘Erm, I think your dog just licked my arsehole … ’ Luckily, we both collapsed laughing. And we’re now married!”
Friendships can suffer as well. In Norfolk, Hannah and her husband were close to another couple. They shared many a bottle of red wine, and went to gigs and for weekends away together. “That’s until they brought the Hound of Hell into their life,” she tells me.
Hannah had heard that the dog didn’t respond well to visitors, and that another friend had been bitten and ended up in A&E. So when they were asked if they wanted to meet the beast, they went along nervously. “It didn’t go well. My other half and I sat perfectly still as he bounded out of the kitchen towards us, barking at a volume far beyond what we expected for his size,” says Hannah. The Hound of Hell wasn’t a big dog – a variety of terrier, she thinks. “‘He’ll soon settle,’ our friends insisted. ‘He’s just a bit nervous.’ I’m more than a bit nervous, I thought!
“We eventually had our meal and drinks outside, but they spent much of the evening more concerned about the dog, continually going indoors to check he was OK, and then one of them decided to take him for a walk while we were still there.”
Hannah and her husband weren’t invited back. “I felt quite hurt about it, really. I’d been rejected because of a dog. Twenty years of a very special friendship down the pan.”
* * *
I heard from people all over the world, and their experiences ranged in tone from comic to tragic. Many wanted to remain anonymous, often understandably. In south Wales, a dachshund drove a wedge between two sisters because the fiance of one of them is afraid of dogs, even sausage dogs. In California, a jealous daughter told her mum’s puppy: “I’m her real kid, I came first, she loves me more, you’re just a dog.”
In New Jersey, two friends had sick cats. One owner got black-market drugs from China, her cat survived; the friend’s cat didn’t. “My friend has held it against me and my cat ever since, and we have gradually stopped speaking.” In Argentina, a boisterous border collie destroyed a family’s furniture, followed by the marriage. “Our divorce was long overdue.”
Muffinn, the cockapoo, was acquired to do the opposite. “We decided to get a dog to try and bond us,” says Muffinn’s female human companion, Chris. “Looking back, it was a rather naive notion.”
Burke agrees: animals (again, like children) don’t work as sticking plasters to patch up rocky relationships. And nor is that good for the pet. “They are sensitive to our energies. So a dog that comes into a home that’s unhappy, where there’s a lot of conflict, will be harder to train. If the dog feels anxious because people are shouting or whatever, it may end up crapping everywhere, being destructive or aggressive, and it’ll be like, ‘This dog has ruined our relationship.’ But, actually, the dog is that way because of the energy it is around. Dogs can end up as scapegoats, when they’re actually more of a barometer of a relationship.”
Back to the cockapoo’s (now sole) owner Chris. “Suffice to say, poor wee Muffinn did not solve our marital woes, and after a plaintive ‘You love that dog more than you love me,’ to which I replied, ‘She’s far easier to love,’ we agreed to part company.” She and Muffinn left the US and are now running happy and free on the beaches of East Lothian, released from the short leash of an unhappy marriage.
Marty is a cockatiel who acts as a litmus test for potential partners for Olly, his owner in Greater Manchester. “The first time I brought a date home after lockdown, Marty went absolutely crazy,” he says. “He was singing, showing off his wings and tail, calling out to her, the works. My date was like, ‘What’s wrong with him?’ I told her he was just happy to see someone new after so long in lockdown with just me. She pulled a grumpy face and said he needed to learn some nicer noises. There was no second date.”
Tim and Mike were friends. Good friends. Mike had put Tim up when he was homeless. But things changed when Roscoe the pot-bellied pig turned up on the scene. “When he told me he had purchased it, I thought he intended on raising it as livestock, to slaughter,” Tim tells me, from North Carolina.
Tim was wrong, Roscoe was very much a pet. An indoor pet. “It’s too cold up in the mountains for a pot-bellied pig.” So Roscoe, who went on to grow tusks and weigh 200lbs, lived in Mike’s living room. The problems started when Roscoe hit puberty, after which he would attack other males, including Tim, whenever he visited. “Mike tried to fix the problem with the pig, took it to the veterinarian to have its testes removed so they wouldn’t produce so much testosterone, but the pig had one testicle that was undescended and the veterinarian didn’t want to get that invasive.”
Whenever Tim went over to see his pal, he was attacked. And Mike wouldn’t try to stop it. “His lack of effort to control his pig made me feel like he really didn’t care about me. He wouldn’t even apologise when the pig would attack me. I still have scars on me from that pig.”
Not surprisingly, Tim stopped going round, until he learned the pig had died – finally, after more than 20 years. “He buried the pig on his property, and showed me where the pig was buried. So when I visited the grave I kicked some dirt on to it and said, ‘Now you stay there.’”
There are dog people and cat people, cockatiel people and pot-bellied pig people, and others who are none of the above. And whether those people can get along with each other – form relationships, perhaps – can depend not just on the usual negotiation and compromise, but also on what they both think a pet should and shouldn’t be and do. And it isn’t always possible. Jane (Barcelona, expensive sofa) thinks it’s often hopeless. “Dog people need to be with dog people and leave the rest of us to live carefree human lives.”
• Hilda Burke, psychotherapist, is author of The Phone Addiction Workbook. Some names have been changed.
• This article was amended on 28 July 2024. An earlier version said that Bran was a female dog instead of a male.
