I have temporarily moved in with my fiancé before we move nearer my family after the wedding. At the moment he lives in a first floor flat with his dog and cat. He is out of the house working every weekday from 7am to 6pm while I work from home.
He has a 7 year old male dog (pinscher cross) and his behaviour is causing issues.
He wasn’t toilet trained when I got together with DP and we have now trained him. The issue is that the dog misbehaves a lot when DP is out. They are very bonded and the dog jumps up at me, barks, scratches me, tries to nip, chews the sofa, jumps on top of the cat and this is usually because he wants to be let on to the balcony. He also tries to eat my food and bothers me at lunchtime. DP encourages him to be crazy when he comes home and often plays boisterous games. The cat is often stressed by this so I don’t like it.
I think routine is important so I take the dog for short walks twice a day when DP is at work but he still behaves in this way. I had a big argument with DP today because I tried to discuss the problem and he just said things like:
’He never behaves like this when I’m there’
‘My mum never has this problem with him when she pops in to take him outside.’
‘You need to be more harsh with him when he misbehaves’
‘If you can’t cope with the dog, how will you cope in the future with a baby?’
‘This is going to be a problem for us living together because he doesn’t respect you’
I feel like he’s blaming me when really he should have trained him from when he was a puppy. I said this to him and he said ‘well next time you can train the dog’.
I grew up with dogs and none of them ever acted like this so it’s not that I dislike dogs. I like all animals. But I feel upset because it’s like I am irritating DP when I try to sort it out. He literally said ‘well what do you want me to do about it when I’m at work?’ He accused me of wanting rid of him when I really don’t.
Does anyone have advice about how to improve the situation?