How to Get Out of Your Abusive Relationship!… with your dog

If you’ve ever had the pleasure of sharing your home with a dog then you already know just as well as I do that buying a new dog isn’t simply adding a new pet to your household, but instead more like adding a new member to your family. This new family member may shed a little more than others, slobber more than some too, but at the end of the day all proud dog owners nurture their K-9 counterparts and watch them grow just like they would with any other member of the family.

Strong families are founded in love and held together by compassion, but even still, anyone whose had a family can tell you first hand that they get crazy. Just like our families can get crazy, our dogs can get a little crazy too, and that drives dog owners crazy! After having a dog for a few years and getting to know them, it can become easy to think back to how cute and little they were on adoption day and start to wonder how the heck the angel puppy you adopted mutated into the Tasmanian devil tearing through your living room. It’s not my place to judge how your relationship with your dog went downhill, and in all honesty, I don’t have much room to judge anyway because my Bichon Yorkie runs my house on a pretty tight leash. What I can do though is give you some tips on how to get out of your abusive relationship with your dog and get back to being the alpha in your household

1. Does your dog refuse to come to you when you call their name? Does your dog bark over you when you're trying to speak? Does your dog talk trash about you behind your back to Buster and FeFe at the dog park? Mutual respect is a crucial aspect of any healthy relationship, and if your dog is displaying any of these tendencies, then it’s likely they don’t respect you. To solve this problem and earn your dog’s respect back I would recommend that you make it a habit to start regularly drinking from the toilet and eating out of the trash in front of your dog. This will show them that you may have more in common than they had once thought, and will greatly enhance their respect for you.

2. Does your dog invade your personal space? Does your dog wait outside the bathroom door or attempt to enter the bathroom while you are using it? Does your dog have access to your social media account passwords? If they do, then it would seem that you and your dog have some serious boundary issues to work on. Although relationships between family members are close, every healthy relationship has established boundaries. To establish healthy boundaries with your pooch I would recommend urinating around the areas where you would not like them to go. For example, if your pooch won’t stop stealing your phone and posting embarrassing photos of you, then the only reasonable course of action is to urinate on your phone.

3. Does your dog boss you around? Do they bark at you when you’re sitting in their spot on the couch? Do they bark at you when they want to go outside and chase squirrels? Do they bark at you when you made the mistake of giving them dog food instead of people food? If your dog exhibits any of these behaviors towards you on a regular basis, then it would seem that your dog has established themselves as the house alpha without telling you. Unfortunately, this is no easy issue to fix. Because dogs define their roles in the pack through hunting and fighting in the wild, in order for you to re-establish yourself as house alpha you will either need to hunt them down a large bison or defeat them in hand-to-hand combat.

4. Does your dog refuse to give in to the oppressive tactics of potty training? Does your dog pee on the carpet? Does your dog leave you chocolate presents around the house? If your dog continuously rejects the concept of potty training, don’t resort to cruel crate training, instead, you can solve this problem by building toilets in every room of the house! If there’s a toilet in every room then there’s no need for your pupper to pee on the floor!

Does your dog run the house? Does your dog refuse to take no for an answer? Is your relationship with your dog abusive!? If so, then you’ve probably figured out by now that this entire article is a joke and that you’re stuck dealing with your bossy, clingy, messy, four legged friend just the way they are. Don’t let this damper your spirit though, because dogs are a lot like sour patch kids. First they’re sour, then they’re sweet, and then they’re gone. Your dog may annoy you sometimes, even get on your last nerve, but dogs are family and they won’t be with us forever. Love your dogs while you can.