Ep 57 Love Me, Love My Dog

Our pets impact our dating lives in countless ways. 

To begin, I share a tragic story of how I adopted a black lab puppy on a whim from a not-so reputable animal shelter in Kansas City years ago. My dad, logically and lovingly asked if I had thought this decision through. I was a young single mom of a 5 year old. Was it really a good idea to add a rambunctious large dog into the mix. He warned me that some men would not want to take all of that on.  I answered with... "So be it. Love me, love my dog." He, of course, made a good point thought. Animals do complicate our lives. (In some of the best ways.)

Next, I talk about how some of us end up sharing dogs with our exes. In my case, I asked Lanie's dad for permission to keep his Australian Shepherd, Maggie, around for protection. I also have a friend whose ex bought a dog to appease the kids only to expect her to be the primary caregiver of the dog. (He's not a dog person.) Sharing family pets is a common occurrence. A lot of the time, I think it can be a good thing.

What kind of impression do pets make on our dating profiles? Being a "dog person" or a "cat person" can be divisive. Admittedly, I'm more drawn to men who love dogs.

One complication of pet ownership while single may be meeting potential partners who are allergic or have an aversion to the type of animals we share our home with. Cat allergies are incredibly common, for example. Or, consider how many people feel about pet snakes... I share a story about my brother's cat allergies and another story about hanging out with a snake loving golfer at Mizzou.

How do you feel about sharing a couch or a bed with someone's beloved cat or dog? Both animals can become territorial both of their space and their people. Also, you may find yourself covered in pet hair. How much are you willing to put up with? I tell a story about my puppy, Rip's  overnight in the home of a guy I dated.

I only covered a small number of ways our beloved pets can impact our dating lives. I'm not one bit apologetic for loving my baby boy puppy, Rip. I just need to find a man who will love him too.

Transcript

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Welcome to Man Shopping with Stacy, where I share my real transparent dating and life experiences for your amusement and inspiration. You're listening to episode 57, Love me, love my Dog, as if dating after divorce, or just later in life wasn't already complicated enough. Here I go, throwing one more thing at you to consider, and that is, how do our pets impact all this stuff, this dating relationship stuff. I'm here to tell you, as a proud dog mom, they impact our dating lives in a lot of important ways,<laugh>. So I'm gonna break it all down for you here in this episode. And of course, I'm gonna share a bunch of my own stories along the way. To begin, let's talk about the title of this podcast episode. Love me, Love My Dog. Well, that came to me as I was thinking back to after my first divorce. About a year after Laney and I, uh, left Wichita, Kansas, moved into our little rental house in Kansas City, my sweet little alman fudge, blonde Shitzu named Jam<laugh>. Um, she died, uh, she was about 14 years old. I'd had her since college. She lived a long, long sweet teddy bear kind of life. And after she passed away, I went to an local animal shelter. Not a very well ran animal shelter at that, but I went there and I was on the hunt for a protector. I decided that since I lived in a, an area that had recently experienced a significant amount of crime, that I needed a watchdog. And so I wanted a, a big dog. Uh, I wanted a sweet dog, but one that at least would draw some awareness that, you know, he probably shouldn't mess with our house. So I found this large male black lab puppy, and I named him Samuel L. Jackson because that was the toughest badass that I could think of at the moment that was also super lovable. Um, and I adopted him and brought him home, and I called my dad and said, Hey, I got a new puppy. And I'm sure he was thinking, What did you get? Like a little, you know, Yorkie poo, uh,<laugh>, another suit, uh, another little toy dog. And I told him, Uh, no, I got this like large, you know, gonna be huge black lab mix. Um, and my dad immediately was like, What have you done? Like, that is such a big undertaking, high energy, big, you know,

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Hairy

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Dog. And he warned me like right away, he's like, You know, you're single. You're out there trying to meet someone, and you just made things really hard on yourself because there's a

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Lot of

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Guys that don't wanna deal with all

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That. That's a lot

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Of work that'll turn off a significant amount of people. And what do you think I said back to him? Well, then he's just not my guy. I mean, if you love me, you

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Gotta take the whole package.

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That included at the time, you know, a

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Four year old

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And

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A big huge black lab puppy. Obviously

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My dad's concern was completely

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Valid.

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<laugh>, he's very

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Practical

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And, uh, he's not wrong, right? But

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I

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Overhear him like a bleeding heart animal lover, in particular

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Dog lover.

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And didn't wanna hear it. Nope. Uh, sometimes if you haven't gathered, sometimes I make decisions just based on my heart and not so much with my logical brain. This happened to be one of those times. It was a tragic

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Story actually. I,

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Um, only had 10 days with Sam, the

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Sweet, huge

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Puppy.

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He had

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Distemper when I adopted him from this

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Questionable shelter

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That is no longer in operation in Kansas City.

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He was

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Very sick. They told me he had kennel cough, but no, he had distemper. And it was a big life lesson for me because

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I

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Did make a pretty quick decision after the loss of my dog. And

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I probably should have

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Researched a little more, taken a little bit more time to make a good decision. I spent, I don't know, maybe$1,500 that I didn't really have at the time on a

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Poor sick dog that I tried desperately

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To nurse back to health, um, only for him to die. So nothing like a

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Terribly tragic story to, uh, kick off this supposed lighthearted,

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You know, podcast

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Episode. But that is the story that had

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Me thinking total

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Heartbreaker of a story.

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Um, but you know, it led to something else. It was

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The Waldo Rapist was

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The crime that was going on in my neighborhood. I guess Laney was

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Actually closer to six years

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Old. I think it all occurred in 2010, 2011. This man was a serial rapist in the very neighborhood, right in the heart of Kansas City that we lived in. And so after Sam died,

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I actually

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Reached out to Laney's dad, my ex-husband, and asked him if I could

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Borrow his

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Australian shepherd, Maggie. Of course, we had shared Lane or shared Laney. We did share Laney too. We shared Maggie in our marriage

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For

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About seven years.

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But she was his

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Dog. Um, he owned her prior to us meeting, and so thankfully he was willing, um, and kindly let Maggie stay

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At our house for weeks

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At a time because she gave me a little bit of comfort

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Because

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She, being an Australian shepherd is

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Very protective, very alert, had great

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Ears, and basically

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Paced the house a lot

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Day and night. And just kind of made me feel a

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Little bit

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More

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At peace

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That, that I had another line of safety in place, which actually leads me to think about another story of a friend of mine who

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Shared a dog with

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Her ex-husband for a while. Now, this is pretty complicated because I, I know that this happens sometimes. I mean, can you imagine when two people

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Get

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Divorced, one of the parents to appease the children

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Caves?

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You know, we've never had a dog in the family before. Never wanted a dog in the family for the reasons of

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Their,

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You know, another mouth to feed another, another warm body to

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Take care of

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All of those things. Busy, busy families often have a hard time keeping up with a dog on top of everything else. And in this family dad

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To please the kids got a dog

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And then kind of thrust it upon his ex-wife as, Oh, the kids love

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This dog.

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Why don't we share it? It can go back and forth between the houses. Now, I actually think that

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That works really well with

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Existing animals. I've seen that happen a lot too in divorce, where you don't have to make the decision that mom or dad

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Keeps the pets, they just

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Travel back and forth with the kiddos. I love hearing about that because I think it's a pretty solid solution for a lot of people to make everyone happy. And, you know, no one loses that way and the kids get to be around their pet, you know, a hundred percent of the time. But in this case of my friend, it was like, Oh, you know, dad is not a dog person, but dad has

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Decided

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He's going to own a dog. But then guess what?

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His ex-wife is

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Actually the ultimate caretaker

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Of the dog

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That she had nothing to do with.

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So

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There's another complication. How about taking care of a dog? That wasn't even your decision in the first

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Place. You are the

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Default, the default,

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Uh, dog

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Mom. Yeah, this

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Is stuff

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That happens. I realize I'm kind of all over

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The

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Place, but hang in there with me<laugh>. When I first thought of doing this episode, it was a long time ago. Um, and it was when I was on Bumble and I found myself getting really

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Judgy,

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<laugh>. Imagine, you know, looking at Bumble for hours on end and getting judgey. It's kind of comes with the

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Territory. It's what we all

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Do. But I found myself

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Really

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Turned off

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By guys who just have

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Cats in their pictures.

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It, it's the

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Truth. I'm a dog person. I don't have anything against cats other than the fact that I was

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Severely allergic

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To them, um, up until a few

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Years ago. Uh,

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So I avoided them my whole life. So I've never really bonded with a

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Cat before, I guess.

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And I mean, at the end of the

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Day, I guess I just prefer

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To be with

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A dog guy, a guy that likes dogs.

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I don't know. But

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Have

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You guys been that way too?

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If you are a

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Cat person, does it just warm your

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Heart to see a

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Guy holding a cat and a photo vice versa? Maybe you're a guy that, um, you know,

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Has,

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Has a family cat and maybe you see a, a cat cat

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Lady out there, uh, with

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A, with a whole bunch of cats. And that's a, that's a turn on for you. I'm gonna guess. So I think, I think we all probably need to consider what

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Our profiles

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And photos and all of that

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Away

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About us. And if you have

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A cat or a dog that is

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Like a family member to you, do you display it on your dating profiles or, and or discuss it early on when you meet someone? I do. I think it's pretty important. And I think, you know, it's, it's not that much different. Kind of funny to say this, it's not that much different than kids. It's really not. How many kids do

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You have? How old

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Are they? What am I in for over here? You know? I mean, what if you

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Saw a profile where they had

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Like three

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Cats, two dogs, a para

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To hamster, a

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Pot

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Belly pig, and they own a Lama farm. Some of you, that's like a dream come true,

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But for others of us, yeah, that's

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Props more than we would want to,

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Uh, live

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With, right? Extreme example. But you get what I mean. We all have our preferences, dog

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People, cat people,

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Big animal people,

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Reptile people,

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Whatever. And it all matters from our first instincts and

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Ideas

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About what that means about a person's personality or lifestyle to just

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Deal

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Breakers in general, right? We can all get a little judgy, I would think. But you know, Just in a general way of taking this topic and thinking about considerations that we should all keep in mind when we're, you know, thinking about how pets impact our dating lives, I mean, mean there's a lot of them. Think about one of the very first things that comes up. Okay? So if you have an aversion or an allergy to a certain type of animal, would that prevent you from, you know, even wanting to go on a date with someone? I would say possibly. So, I mean, if you are severely allergic to cats and the person that you met it, you know, is a cat person that how far is that relationship really gonna go? You know, ask her or him to give up their cats? Probably not. I know people can be allergic to dogs as well, dander. Um, I'm pretty sure there are allergies to like Guinea, Guinea pigs and hamsters and, and rabbits probably. I mean, or your kids, right? You meet somebody, you like'em, but your kid is severely allergic to an animal that the other person happens to have. They carry it with them on their clothing, they come into your house. It can be a really big deal. And I know that it might sound slight or or silly to some of you who don't have allergies or know much about it, but it's, it can just absolutely freaking make you miserable re havoc make you really ill actually. So there's that to consider. I mean, seriously, my allergy truly did reverse itself. Um, I went through allergy testing as a child before I started shots, and then again, um, just a few years ago when I started taking allergy shots again. And that was one of the only allergies that reversed that I'm no longer allergic to cats. And apparently that's happened to my, to my older brother as well as I was his, um, best, best lady, best woman at his wedding and gave a speech. The punchline of, uh, my joke that I told during my wedding speech for my big brother was, um, he must really, really love his wife Leslie, because he has spent his whole life really hating cats, like hating cats. And now my brother, I'm not kidding, sends me videos and photos of his cats, um, pretty frequently. He's a cat lover now. So I mean, look at that love can overcome mighty obstacles. Um, but the allergy thing, honestly, he, if he had allergies to the cats now that he had as a child, he, he literally could not live with them. Like he has turned down apartments and stuff in the past, um, because they make him sick. So I guess, you know, it's a good thing, uh, for both of us, but for him, for him in particular, that this cat allergy reversed. Okay, so that's one consideration, right? Allergies, just avers. Maybe, maybe you meet someone and they're terrified of dogs, maybe, maybe you have, um, a dog, you know, that's has, is of a breed that has a, a, a bad reputation for being aggressive, um, that can, you know, that can cause concern, um, for some people, maybe a little bit of emotional distress. Um, maybe there's no reason to have an aversion to your pet at all. Like maybe you love snakes. Hey, I've, I've got a friend who's a science teacher who has, um, aquariums full of snakes in a very well controlled room in, in their home. And I mean, uh, he has a wife who thankfully<laugh>, I think she kind of adores the snakes, like, I think it's, she's kind of into it too, but I mean, for some people they couldn't live in a house where they knew that there was a room full of snakes. It just would never happen. So just something, something to keep an open mind about as you're out there in the dating world. I mean, all of us have our preferences and our versions and our allergies. So just, you know, one more thing to, uh, add to the list. Oh, the snakes got me thinking about another story.<laugh>, when I went to school at Mizzou, I, I spent some time, spent some time with this, uh, this guy who lived in a dorm for athletes, and he was a golfer and he actually had a snake in an aquarium in his dorm room. And he would take the snake in like a loose bag or like a pillow case or something to the driving range with him. I'm not kidding. And the snake, he would let the snake out in the grass near him while he was on the driving range, and then he'd collect the snake and take it back to his room. And I spent time in that dorm room hanging out, having fun my freshman year of college. And I don't know how I got past that, um, but I did. And that's saying something I guess young and, okay. Moving on to something I think a lot of us can relate to, and I'm sure a lot of you have experience with. How about just the different rules that we have for our pets in our homes? This is, you know, obviously largely about dogs and cats. Uh, do you let your cat on your couch? Do, have they scratched holes in it? Do they leave hair all over it? Does your dogs sleep with you in bed at night? You know where I'm going with this? Um, a lot of us who are single find comfort and companionship and love and affection from our animals. So we are very tight with them and then enters, you know, new boyfriend, new girlfriend, and are they okay with that? Um, or would they like us to train our animals up or, you know, are there other conflicting issues? Um, for instance, at the end of my second marriage, my ex and I, we got a puppy, you know, we didn't have a baby, but, uh, we got a puppy and it was a really horrible time to do. So it was pretty irresponsible of us as we were in a lot of turmoil and we were just not well equipped or it was just a, yeah, horrible timing to try to train a puppy. So this poor dog had a whole ton of issues to begin with, um, that were incredibly challenging. He was yellow lab rescue and, um, he was just a hot mess, sweetest dog ever. Not in his fault at all. Um, I worked with him a lot, but I, I honestly did not make very good progress with the few with him in the few months that we had him. But one of the things, I was definitely his person. I was his main caregiver, all of that. I mean, I did a poor job at the training, but I tried. I loved him. And, um, one of the things that he started doing that happens sometimes unfortunately, and I think it's bred out of fear, dogs can become, um, possessive over their territory, over their space. So maybe they'll guard like an area of the couch and they won't let any, you know, anyone sit, sit there, uh, because they consider it to be theirs. Um, our puppy did that to our bed at the very end. Um, when my ex and I weren't getting along, I'm gonna guess, I'm gonna guess that dog could sense some tension as there was plenty and he got aggressive and my puppy, Rory, and I would go to bed and my ex would come to bed later and he would snarl growl, show his teeth and try to keep my, uh, then husband from, you know, laying in bed. It was a problem. People, it was a problem. Um, and I can imagine that that kind of stuff on occasion happens, you know, when a new person enters. Um, you know, especially a dog's space. I know cats get pissy, literally, you know, pee on things, stuff like that. When, when their, um, when their territories, their, their place, their, you know, their home is intruded upon and invaded by an outsider. Um, so, you know, that's something to think about too. You know, how far are you willing to go to, um, teach your old dog new tricks, You know, maybe to not get up on the couch anymore, or as someone dating, you know, um, someone with pets. Are you able to get over, you know, having dog hair on you or sharing the couch or the bed with an animal? It's gonna come up people, I promise you it has in my life for sure. I mean, Rip and I did one solid overnight, um, with a guy that I was dating who had a, a small, small, little mopy, fluffy, sweet little dog and Rip wanted, um, it was female dog and it was before Rip had been neutered and Rip could not leave her alone, terrified the little dog. We had to keep him separated for the night. Um, the little dog, she didn't eat her dinner. She was sad and stressed out and confused, and she was an older dog too. So it's like, okay, here's this crazy puppy who wants a piece of her, you know, um, driving her crazy all night, making her anxious cuz she was, it was just such an unusual set of circumstances. And then not only that, but then, you know, Rip is pretty well behaved. He's got quirks, but, um, he's trained well enough. He, he listens pretty well, um, for the most part. But we separated the dogs overnight. And one of the things that Rip Naughty Boy did was, um, we had toys and chew things down on the floor for him, but, um, within, I don't know, 30 seconds in the morning when we woke up, he, he chewed on the baseboard, um, at the corner of the room and did a little damage. Ouch, that sucks. Um, I felt like. And I, uh, quickly, you know, got his stuff together and was like, Okay, time to leave. Sorry about that. I mean, what do you do? I'm not a carpenter. I'm not a painter. I mean, I could touch up some paint on a, on a baseboard, but, you know, I mean, all I could do was apologize and, and think to myself, How in the hell is this gonna work going forward? Our dogs can't be in the same room together. I mean, maybe that would've, maybe that would've gone better after he got fixed. Probably a little bit. I don't know. And I'm sure with more time and exposure to one another, they probably would've been friends at some point. But I definitely did have my doubts too that the guy I was dating, although I know he loved Rip, and he loved to play with him, like, could he like envision years with this big hairy shedding dog when he had purposefully himself chosen, uh, hypoallergenic small dog for his home, bringing it back to, uh, the overnight dilemmas when you have dogs. My, a friend of mine said one time, he's like, Man, my dog kept me out of trouble. I was like, What do you mean? And he's like, Well, I can never stay at happy hour too long, have too many drinks, or go home with somebody unexpected or unplanned because I had to go home to my dog. He kept me grounded, he kept me honest, he kept me, you know, safe and he helped me make good decisions. And I was like, Man, you know, that is a good way to look at it. Our pets really do. Just to offer one more lens to view relationships through, to gauge, you know, sustainability, will this work our, our lifestyles, our beliefs, our, um, attraction, our children, our finances, our location, and now our pets. You know, do they, do they all line up? I mean, I haven't put together my deal breakers episode yet, but when I do, you better believe our pets will be on that list because as I said at the beginning, love me, love my dog. Rip<laugh>, that's his name. For those of you who don't know Rip, like, uh, the big cowboy on Yellowstone. And if you listen and want to get to know me a little bit more personally, make a close connection, give me a follow on Instagram, Stacy, s t a c i e, underscore weer, w i n e r. I absolutely love to hear from listeners, get your opinions, ideas for shows, hear from you, get to see what your lives are like, because we are all in this journey together. After all, thank you guys so much for listening to episode 57. Love Me, Love My Dog. And up next episode 58, this came from a friend of mine today, this idea, episode 58. Coming up next is titled, What's the Worst That Could Happen.