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Therapist helps couples find pets' place in homes, relationships
Tuesday, March 28, 2000 By Deborah Weisberg
Newlyweds rarely have an easy time settling into a household routine. Add a jealous dog to the mix and it gets even tougher. Just ask 28-year-old Greg Romano of Richland, who found himself in a tug of war with Pody, his wife's 7-year-old Shih Tzu, shortly after their marriage last fall.
"Till I came into the picture, Pody was used to having his way," says Romano, whose wife, Christa, admits to treating the dog like a "furry child." "I know people are attached to their pets, but let's just say Christa went overboard."
Pody protested the marriage by stealing socks, growling at Greg and outmaneuvering his human rival.
"He grabbed a bag of cookies from me once, then hid in a place where I couldn't reach him," Greg recalls. "I had to run downstairs and ring the doorbell to distract him, then come in the back way and get the cookies while he was barking at the door. Otherwise, he'd eat the whole bag and puke, and I'd be the one who'd have to clean it up. It's almost pathetic a dog can get away with this."
Sometimes, Greg would smack Pody's nose and Christa would cringe.
"I'm not going to sugar-coat this," Greg says. "We had some big-time fights."
Looking for a leg up, Greg called Barb Levenson, a dog trainer and owner of Barb Levenson Dog Training Centers. She enrolled the threesome in private sessions and gave them homework, like ignoring Pody for three weeks, except at mealtimes, when he'd have to earn his food by obeying a command, then, literally, eat out of his owners' hands.
"It was hard at first," admits Christa, who secretly slipped into baby talk with her dog. "But eventually I saw how I was contributing to the problem."
"We needed [to be] trained more than the dog," Greg says.
When someone has an animal, and one-third of Americans do, everyone has to compromise -- the man, the woman and the pet. Pet experts say sleeping arrangements -- should we let Fido in bed or not? -- are among the most common sources of conflict. But problems can extend into any area of everyday life, from meals to jobs and vacations to one-on-one time. And, of course, whether to have a pet at all.
"The issues we have with our animals are microcosms of other issues in our lives. The things we're struggling with get played out in our interactions with our dogs, like control and neediness," Levinson said.
Oakland psychotherapist Jim Bozigar agrees.
"If there's jealousy or resentment about a pet, it can indicate a deeper issue around how secure we feel in the relationship."
Still, Levinson insists, where there's a wag, there's a way.
"It can be worked out, unless someone flat-out doesn't like animals. Then the person with the pet has to make a choice," she says. "Men have come into my life and not liked dogs and so we didn't date. My feeling was, if they don't want a dog in the picture, they don't want me because dogs are an integral part of my life."
"But if the man in my life didn't want the dogs in bed with us," says Levinson, who sleeps with four Border collies and an Australian shepherd, "that would not be an issue. I would make some compromises. But so would he. And so would the dogs."
But not everyone does.
"I've had couples who aren't willing to do the work involved, who wind up getting rid of the pet. I had a case where a woman didn't want her husband's Doberman -- and I mean this was a huge Doberman -- around their toddler. The man refused to make changes. I honestly believe he was more attached to his dog than his child."
On the other hand, thousands of pets are dumped each year to placate an inflexible mate, says Animal Rescue League adoption director Sharon Goldstein.
"A woman recently brought in two gorgeous Himalayan cats because her live-in boyfriend didn't like them. She was upset, but not upset enough to say no."
"If a man didn't accept my pets, I know how I'd resolve it," Goldstein says. "Let's just say, the pets wouldn't be the ones to go."
Some couples with a bone to pick seek counseling.
"Usually, they're at odds over an animal's place in the home," says Squirrel Hill psychotherapist Beverly Steinfeld, who shares her bed with a husband and three cats. "In my experience, it's usually the woman who wants to allow the pet in a space the man thinks should be off limits. Like any conflict, it can be resolved, but the resolution is unique to each couple."
Giant Eagle executive Jim Lampl rescued a 110-pound Rottweiler-shepherd mix from a trailer park two years ago without consulting girlfriend Terri Hill. It's a sore point the Oakmont couple is trying to soothe before their wedding this June.
"It would be different if we had picked out a puppy together. Jim is a caring, sensitive guy, but he takes on these dogs who aren't ideal family pets," says Hill, a flight attendant.
"Terri wasn't enamored of dogs to begin with, and she especially doesn't like large dogs," Lampl says. "She's pressured me to give him up. But the chance of my doing that is remote."
Lampl says the issue is resolved: "Duke is my dog and my responsibility, and we won't be sharing him anytime soon."
Hill says they're still working on it. "It's a source of strain, but I'm trying hard. When we get married, we'll have to give each other space."
That won't be hard because the couple is building a home that will limit Duke's access to certain rooms.
Meanwhile, Giant Eagle energy manager Cliff Timko and Connie, his wife of 26 years, are used to being hounded at bedtime. Of their three pugs, only Max, an 18-pound male, is athletic enough to jump onto the couple's bed. And he usually waits until they're both asleep.
"When we push him off, he gets right back up," the Munhall man says. "He keeps it up until we finally give in."
"The other two, Opal and Olive, can't get up on their own, but they'll cry and scratch until we lift them," Connie says. "Usually, I give in way before Cliff does, but, last night, I didn't, and Olive spited us by peeing on a quilt that had fallen to the floor."
While Steinfeld believes that women feel more comfortable than men "being in love with their pets," the old adage that it's hard to part a guy and his dog is borne out by Whitaker plumber Joe Lesko, who trained his hunting Labs, Zoey and Zar, to share the bed with him and his wife, Jen.
"Zoey stretches across the pillow above my head and Zar curls up at Jen's feet," says Lesko, whose pit bull mix, Misty, now deceased, introduced him to the joys of canine cuddling. "She'd sleep with her leg across my chest," Lesko recalls. "It was great. I liked the closeness."
"Pets give us the feeling of being loved," Steinfeld observes. "We don't know what our pet is feeling, but we assume they love us, and it's human to respond to that feeling of being loved."
But not all pets are willing bedmates.
"I wish Punim would sleep with me," says Animal Rescue League veterinarian Ronna Greenberg of the Irish-Setter mix she found on the streets of McKeesport. "I'd love the closeness. But he'll only get on the bed when I'm out of the room. There must have been someone in the past who told him no."
"Dogs have a pack mentality and see owners as part of the pack," Levinson says. "The bed is one of the top-ranked spots in the house. It's where the pack leader sleeps."
"If a dog gets put in the owner's bed before it's socially mature, which is at least a year or a year-and-a-half old, they get a feeling they're higher ranking than they are. They may feel like the leader. Small dogs, in particular, like being elevated. And that means they'll feel entitled to correct -- which may mean snap at or bite -- anyone they see as a lesser member of the pack, including their owner."
"Ninety percent of the behavior problems I see stems from dogs getting into bed before they know who's boss," Levinson says. "I encourage owners to let their dogs sleep in the bedroom because it has the richest scent. But they should crate them until they are subordinated."
Some animal lovers, like Clarion carpenter Rita Cunningham, allow their pets to determine their sleeping arrangements.
"I have cats on either side of me. If I have to get up in the middle of the night, I feel like a contortionist trying to ease out of bed and not disturb them."
"Of course, they have no qualms about disturbing me," she says. "Around 4 a.m., they decide it's time to get up. One starts licking my face and hair and the other runs and jumps all over me. It doesn't take long for me to give in and crawl out."
Allison Park antiques dealer Dick Meeker had to switch beds with Dick Snyder, his partner of 28 years, to accommodate the short-legged Peek-a-poo they adopted seven years ago from a friend who was dying of AIDS. Buffy attached herself to Snyder, but couldn't get up on his brass bed herself, so the men traded rooms.
"Sleeping with her was a comfort," Snyder recalls. Buffy died last summer, and the couple now has cats, each of whom has claimed a bed.
But some people wouldn't crawl into bed with an animal, no matter how well-behaved it is, or who else is there.
"She could be Marilyn Monroe, and it simply wouldn't work," says Shadyside food marketing executive Dick Tennebaum. "I'm allergic. And pets are a distraction. They invade the private space a couple wants to share. I'd feel like I was competing for the woman's attention, or that she'd be more concerned about her pet than about enjoying herself."
Believing that sleeping with pets is unhealthful reflects how culturally estranged we are from the natural world, says animal behavior specialist Betsy Crouse of Richland, who -- "Oh, my gosh, yes!" -- shares her bed with her dog.
"It's comforting to have your warm, furry friend by your side," she says. "As we get more and more disconnected from the natural world, we hunger for that connection. Living closely with an animal enables us to tap into that world."
Crouse, who is single, calls Travis, the 40-pound fox hound mix she found wandering the turnpike a decade ago, "my dear friend."
"We go everywhere together. And people always comment on how well-behaved he is," she says. "We've done a lot of work over the years developing a mutually respectful and satisfying relationship.
"We communicate with dogs physically, mentally, and emotionally, and we need to be consistent in all three. Too often, we give dogs mixed messages, saying one thing with our bodies and another with our thoughts, which dogs pick up on."
Deborah Weisberg is a free-lance writer.
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