Online dating gone wrong: I find my date’s dogs really needy

My new girlfriend and I were having sex in her bed. The sex was great. We had really clicked in the bedroom. There was just one problem – her sheets and pillows didn’t smell nearly as good as she did.
For a minute I couldn’t work out what it was but the smell seemed familiar. Then I realised. It was dog smell. Wet dog. Read on as I bring you my latest tale of online dating gone wrong…

High-maintenance canines

Statistically it was bound to happen. Living in a city which has reputedly the highest dog ownership per person in the world I was bound to end up dating a dog owner sooner or later.
This happened despite having a policy of never swiping right on anyone who has more than one dog photo (or a dog whose feet are not on the ground) in their dating bio.
In the same way I wouldn’t swipe right on someone who mentions how much they love their kids in their profile.
It’s assumed. If they have to mention it it’s probably going to be a reeeaaally big thing in their life.

Emotional rescue

My new gf (the date I wrote about before who also has the baby has evolved into a girlfriend) had not just one but two, small cross-breeds.
They’re not the soft lazy Labrador kind I get on with. They have high metabolic rates which cause them to tremble slightly all the time and wear little coats.
These little canine emperors were pretty much allowed to do whatever they wanted.
They started to whine as soon as one they felt they weren’t getting enough attention — which was almost always. They were so emotionally needy they practically required their own emotional support human.
She had a baby and the dogs – former child substitutes – were now not getting enough attention.
It wasn’t the dogs fault but it wasn’t good for our relationship either.

A weak spot

The dogs had always slept on her bed and though she was punctilious about her own and her house’s cleanliness in other areas, this was a weak spot (and often a wet spot as well).
Just like heavy smokers can sometimes get so used to the smell of nicotine on their own clothes that they don’t notice it anymore, she hadn’t realised what her bed smelt like to others.
As we had sex in missionary position, with me on top, my face was pressed into the pillow. That was when I started to notice the “wet dog” smell.
I almost felt like retching but instead lifted up my face and smelt her neck instead, which smelled great.

Pillow talk

And I remember that when I had arrived at afternoon I’d walk past her bedroom and to my surprise saw one of the dogs sleeping on her pillow.
At night the sound of paws skittering on the parquet floor (and the smell of dog farts) kept me awake. One of the dogs was good natured but the other snapped at the baby, which was worrying.
But when I mentioned the dogs she rolled her eyes.
“I can’t handle someone else giving me a hard time about my dogs,” she said.
Apparently it had been a thing for one of her exes as well.

Open boundaries

One of my bad traits in relationships is that when I’m really into someone, especially at the beginning, I will sometimes let stuff go that I really should bring up.
More and more I’m realizing that setting these kind of boundaries is an essential skill.
So, in this case I pretended that the wet dog smell didn’t bother me. That was because I wanted to continue our early relationship idyll of great sex without any interruption.
But of course these kind of sacrifices never work in the long run.
At some point I was always going to mention that it was hard for me to sleep in her bed when the smell of the pillows and a few other things bothered me.

The wrong kind of pillow talk

Childishly, that moment came when she said something unflattering about my flat.
She was in my kitchen. It’s not a disaster area but it’s the kitchen of a divorced guy in his 40s who cleans without great enthusiasm.
That was when she opened a cupboard that I rarely use. It hadn’t been cleaned for some time.
it wasn’t like there was congealed food there but it was obviously an ignored part of the flat.
“That’s pretty disgusting,” she said. “You should hire someone to do some cleaning in here. If I’m going to come round I don’t want to be seeing stuff like that.”

Neat freaks

I was quite taken aback by strength of her criticism. Most of my girlfriends have been neat freaks. A couple of them have joked about my kitchen being less than gleaming but nobody had ever said anything so blunt.
“Right,” I said, swallowing hard. “I take your point but perhaps you could find a more gentle way of expressing it.”
“I’ll tell it like it is when it comes to cleanliness,” she said. “That’s an absolute non-negotiable in any guy I’m seeing.”

Rising to the bait

I was starting to feel that slight buzzing sensation which I sometimes get when I’m surprised at the strength of someone else’s anger.
“Okay,” I said. “Well I have a problem with something in your place.”
“My house is impeccable,” she said. “If you’re going to criticise anything there it’s not because there’s anything wrong with it. It’s just because you’re angry because of what I said about your kitchen.”
That’s when I took a deep breath and mentioned the wet dog smell.
Needless to say it did not go down well.
“That isn’t true. You just don’t like my dogs,” she said.

Tit for tat

It had been one of those exchanges where I had suddenly dramatically revised down the potential lifespan of our relationship.
We had literally just been seeing each other regularly for a couple of weeks. It was the second time we had a disagreement (I can’t even remember now what the first one was about).
But I figure that with relationships you never have any idea how it’s going to pan out until you’ve had a first argument.
That’s when you see if a person likes to fight clean or dirty and how conciliatory they are.

A shaggy dog story

I didn’t like the fact that my girlfriend had been so blunt about my kitchen. And I liked it even less that she refused to take my criticism seriously.
But I realised I had a problem of my own making here.
By only bringing up my problem with the wet dog smell on her sheets when she criticized me it was easy for her to see it as a mere tit for tat.
What she said about me not liking her dogs though – she was bang on about that.
And of course even if she hadn’t known it beforehand she could tell now by the way I didn’t manage to muster any kind of convincing denial to that accusation.
I had assumed when we started seeing each other that the baby might be a problem.
Now I began to wonder if the dogs were going to be a bigger problem than the baby.
Perhaps an even bigger problem was that I should have figured on the oft-repeated dictum that dogs often resemble their owners.

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