Problem with girlfriends dog. Long ish post.
Hello, I need some help with my girlfriends dog, or just advice generally.
I'm wondering if anybody has any advice, or experience within a similar realm or situation here. Before I get too far into it, I want to just say up front, I'll already acknowledge and own that I am a significant part of the problem in this situation as well, so I already know I'm not helping the situation.
Without writing a novel anymore than this already will be, the long story short is a few years ago, my girlfriend got a new dog, and literally since the moment she'd acquired the dog, it's been a huge strain on our relationship. Now I have a dog and a cat, and she has 2 cats, and even though that many animals can be overstimulating at times, it's nothing compared to this new dog. It's an Australian Shepherd, and her friend who breeds them gave it to her, after she sold it, and then the owners gave it back (I secretly think they abused it and then gave it back) but who knows, anyway, this dog is extremely overprotective, it growls at me basically non stop for just being close to her, It either just lives in its kennel, or underneath her, goes everywhere with her, including the bathroom, and is such an anxious mess that is just has to sprint everywhere top speed making a huge mess in its path.
I generally like animals and don't usually have problems with them, I love my dog more than almost anything else, so I get it, but as much as it pains me to say it, I hate her dog. I think its made our relationship worse, it overstimulates me, it pisses me off, I tried for a long time when we got the dog initially to make it okay with me, but IDK what it is with that dog, and it's not just me, it is literally everybody else that isn't either my gf, or her friend that gave it to us. Those are the only 2 people that dog likes, and no amount of effort on my part has made any difference at all, so now I just don't even try. Last time I tried to get close to her dog when we were in the kitchen and it was underneath her, I tried to just pet her, and she literally pissed on the floor.
Now we get to today, we were about to head upstairs to go shower, and I hear the dog sprinting across my hardwood to run upstairs, and I was behind her, so I turned around and stuck out my foot to block the dog on the stairs, I redirect my dog all the time with my foot, I don't think of this as a big deal, so I blocked her dog and kinda pushed (I barely applied any force) on her to tell her no, and go back to the kennel. Then my girlfriend got really upset at me saying I should have just let the dog run up the stairs and it wouldve gone back downstairs after we went into the bathroom, and I said I didn't want to be tripped going up the stairs, and then she said well it wasn't a good reason to kick her dog down the stairs. To be clear, I didn't kick her dog down the stairs. Her dog is such a manic mess that it literally trips over itself constantly, and she tripped over her legs slightly? Like her version of events would make you think I like punted this dog down the stairs, and the reality is it ran halfway up the stairs, ran into my foot, redirected itself, and tripped hitting the hardwood cause she was skidding out trying to sprint at 15 mph going back down the stairs. I understand how it probably looked from her perspective like turning around on the stairs and catching the last like glimpse of it, but yeah, IDK. Feet are also just how I'm used to wrangling dogs, which she knows. I foot block my dog all the time, or if we're on a walk and she's sniffing one spot too long, I'll nudge her butt with my foot to say like okay, let's keep going. I do it at my moms house all the time too, cause my mom will just leave the door wide open so I have to block her dog with my foot. I've never thought this was an issue.
Anyway, this led into a bigger more complex argument over the course of the next hour where we almost ended up breaking up. Her criticism is that I hate her dog, and that I don't even try to bond with it, which is true at this point, but it's because I already have tried, and it's not moved that dogs attitude even an inch. I did a lot of research with training my dog, and hers, and have tried so many different things in the past, and all it did was got me bit, and growled at, and again, I'm not the only one that dog has bitten. I honestly wish she'd just get rid of it, I had brought the idea up a few times in the past, but I don't even bother now because I know it's awful thing to suggest, but it's also just not going to happen. I think the part that sucks is, I do really love animals, and I wouldn't ever hurt her dog intentionally, so the implication from her already hurts, but the one thing that I do feel really bad about is that I hate her dog, and I don't know how to get over that at this point. I know like, the onus would have to be on me, not the animal, I'm the one being petty and immature about it, the dog can't help it, but like I just can't. I tried to tell her today like, every single thing it does just overstimulates me, and I don't know how that is ever going to change, it's something I wouldn't even know where to begin to like force myself to try and get over that at this point. I have a very low energy dog, and I guess maybe high energy dogs just aren't my thing. I guess it just feels hopeless right now, I'm not sure what I can or should do.