Girlfriend obsessed with her dog

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I have a friend who has 2 dogs and calls them her daughters. Buys them clothes, takes Christmas card photos of them, has birthday parties for them, literally if you read her social media posts without looking at the photos you'd assume she was talking about children. "My daughters had a great time decorating for the holidays with me. Jane picked out the tree and Susie's favorite part was putting up the ornaments. They decorated cookies for santa this afternoon and I made sure to get them to bed early since tomorow is Christmas morning and I have to wrap their gifts after they're asleep!"

I would say it's because she is in her 40s and married without kids and it's some sort of response to the fact that maybe she was unable to have kids or her husbad didn't want them, but she was like this when I knew her in her early 20s when we were all childless and single.

I know some who does this. She posts incessantly on social media and about 95% of her posts are similar to this. She writes about her dogs’ birthday parties and Father’s Day gifts “the girls chose for their dad.” One of the dogs injured her leg and she wrote about taking her “baby for walks in her stroller.”

She and her husband TTC unsuccessfully for years (many rounds of IVF/multiple miscarriages), so I assume that’s why she does this. I have a lot of sympathy for her and I love my dog, but this is super weird.

IF OP’s GF behaved like this, I would agree that there are some red flags. But, he says she spends a day every other weekend hiking with the dog, brings her on some trips and lets her in the furniture. This sounds like really normal behavior for any responsible dog owner. I’m a married mom of three and this is similar to how we treat our dog. If OP isn’t a dog person, that’s fine and this isn’t the woman for him. But, nothing that he has said about her behavior is a red flag.