AITA for choosing my dog for over my man?
I (28F) & my boyfriend (30M) have been living together for about a year. (Note: I own the home)
I have always been an animal lover and have a HUGE soft spot for animals. I have had all different kinds of pets growing up, and currently have 3 rescue cats each found and rescued from different situations.
Less than 2 months ago, I was driving to work and found a dog running on the side of the road. I immediately stopped my car and did everything I could to catch him. Long story short, I did lure him into my car with beef jerky, took him to the vet, located his old owner, who told me her husband did not like dogs and offered me to keep him.
I did.
He is a very sweet 5 year old dog who is affectionate, goofy, and snores adorably loud. The cats have been getting more used to him, and my boyfriend started to really like him — even though he did NOT want to keep him and was adamant at first he wanted to give him away.
Fast forward to now, things were good and we have enjoyed our new dog aside from some accidents inside the house and the occasional trash raid.
However, today I arrived home and was preparing food. I dropped a wrapper on the floor and our dog picked it up and walked away with it. I asked my boyfriend to grab it so he doesn’t swallow it.
He walks up to our dog from behind, reaches for it, dog growls, then snaps at his hands and successfully gives him a cut on both hands. He takes a step back, stands there, frozen — still staring at our dog, and the dog jumps up and snaps once more at him. Before anything else could happen, I stood up, shouted “ *dog name* NO!” And our dog immediately stopped. I let him outside and shut the door.
My boyfriend did not have serious injuries (scratches on his wrist, one 1”-1.5” long cut that bled a bit on his finger) but was visibly shaken up.
My boyfriend immediately told me he wanted to splatter the dogs brains all over, that he would kill him if he ever did anything like this again, or take him directly to the vet to be put down, that “that’s what happens when a dog bites the hand that feeds them” and was upset that I did not want to kill my dog over this.
I tried to compromise by immediately booking a consultation for anti-food aggression dog training, and that for now if it made him feel safer we could use a shock collar (I know, I didn’t want to but this was a last resort).
He told me he no longer felt comfortable in the home with our dog there, would not come downstairs if the dog was here, and refused to let him outside or feed him anymore.
I completely understand he is upset and was injured. It’s not okay. However, I do not agree with him that I should kill my dog over this.
I feel slightly bad because after it happened I asked him why the hell he crept up behind our dog and tried to grab food out of his mouth — that he could have shoved him away from him and asserted some kind of dominance.
Boyfriend also left to get food and before he would come back in the house, he made me lock the dog outside. I eventually let him back in and our dog was back to his normal self, not even a bark, and is currently sleeping.
I’m not sure what to do to make this eventually better…he says that “thing” is no longer his dog, and he wants it dead. He said I downplayed what happened and I didn’t take him seriously.
I’m honestly still shocked this happened because our dog has never done anything at all like this before to me. Even my boyfriend has taken things away from him before without incident. I also feel the way he handled and reacted to this incident made me lose a little respect for him…although yes he was bitten, I am a little confused how he was this terrified. I admittedly have had big dogs my whole life and have actually been bitten similarly a few times, but never once wanted to kill an animal over resource guarding.
I told him that I would not get rid of my dog, and that if he was afraid to stay here he could move out. I’m worried that we will end up breaking up over this.
So Reddit, AITA for choosing my dog over my boyfriend?