Anonymous wrote:
Well, I successfully persuaded my husband!
However I had the most powerful aid in the world: his cute little daddy's girl who wheedled him for an entire year. She's very persuasive

Here's the thing. The dog has been both better and worse than my husband's hope and fears.

Our dog is a high maintenance breed, chosen by said daddy's girl, and I do the grooming and cleaning, and most of the walks, and when he was a puppy, I was the one who got out of bed three times a night for his pee. The dog also had a Hurricane Diarrhea episode - I'm traumatized because I was the one who got home from work already frazzled and had to clean it up while trying to prevent the dog and the kids from swimming in it. It was massive, OP. I had to clean up the flooded crate and the dog and his toys in the yard with the hose, but he became so muddy in the yard I couldn't tell what was poo and what was mud, so I had to carry him, wet and struggling, to the bathroom to bathe him there, dripping goo everywhere, and then spent the night deep cleaning all that part of the house because *the nasty-smelling stuff had splattered everywhere*.

Despite not dealing with those things, my husband has had to resign himself to the dog's shedding. We have to be diligent with the Roomba and lint rollers. And my husband has taken over the morning walk, because I can't get out of bed at 6:30am, and the dog starts whining then barking at that time until someone walks him, and we don't want to wake up the kids too early. At first my husband was also disgusted with the idea of picking up dog poo

And in the end... my husband loves the dog. The dog comes from a champion line and is undeniably beautiful to look at (we receive comments on him all the time), plus he's very affectionate and social. The morning walks have made them bond.

So all is well. I just hope that nothing so disgusting as Hurricane Diarrhea will ever come to plague us again.

Anonymous wrote:Do you have a history of not taking care of things?

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Someone's desire to feel like their home is clean and a calm place for them to retreat to trumps their spouse's desire to have an animal living in the house with them. Every time.

+1,000[/quote

Another vote for this.

There are other ways you can bond with an animal. Volunteer at a shelter, take a regular walking gig, offer to dog sit a neighbor or friend's dog (at their house). There are not other places your wife can live.