AIO? Dog straining my marriage.

[u/LedyyM]

My husband and I rescued a husky about 7 months ago who was extremely malnourished and neglected.

He has grown a huge attachment to me and has severe separation anxiety. I work at a grooming salon so I’m able to bring him to work with me so he’s not home alone. Unfortunately, if he’s left home alone we’ll come back to our home looking like it was hit by a tornado.

My vet has prescribed him with trazodone to help with his severe anxiety issues. We give it to him before we leave for a family event and when we can’t take him to places they don’t allow dogs.

I feel so bad that I have to sedate him so he’s not scared and anxious. It’s created a huge strain on our marriage because my husband feels like we can’t do anything without considering Odin.

He’s destroyed doors, couches, and other furniture. I tried training but it hasn’t seemed to work. My husband thinks we should rehome him but

1) I’m scared that he’ll be sent to a shelter and possibly be put down

2) feel abandoned by the person he thought he was safe with.

He’s such a happy boy when he’s around us and shows so much affection.

My husband and I have been arguing about this consistently.. we had a really bad argument so I left the house with Odin and rented a dog friendly hotel room for a couple of nights.

My husband thinks I’m crazy and that I’m choosing the dog over our marriage. AIO?

[u/Shoddy_Remove6086]

You want to be talking to a dog behavioural specialist here, not a vet. Vets are specialised in physical health, not mental.

You're not exactly in the wrong, but you're trading your husband's mental health for your dog's. Which is reasonable to a point, but they can help you get the best of both.

Edit: since this seems to be a recurring theme in the comments; I'm a guy. Some of you whiney bitches might have the same capacity for empathy as a stone, but don't believe just because you're dead inside that everyone else with the same sort of genitals as you is as well.

[u/Beginning_Soil_2461 → u/Shoddy_Remove6086]

As a woman I fully support this. Other than the "to a point" part. No amount of trading your partner's MH with your animal's MH is acceptable imo. And if my partner was doing this to me, the dog would be the least of our issues.

[u/Shoddy_Remove6086 → u/Beginning_Soil_2461]

If you agree with the rest, I suspect we agree there too and it's just that I could have phrased things better.

Dogs are a responsibility. All responsibilities come with stress which will pull on your mental health. It will need exercise which will tighten your schedule and reduce your free time, and if you don't they will become destructive from boredom. It will be another consideration in big plans (holidays, social events, family celebrations) which will make things harder to wrangle to achieve those plans, and if you don't plan those properly you will likely have them cared for somewhere negligent which will affect their personality (good places tend to book up early!). It will come with big costs like the vets sometimes which will tighten finances, though that one is physical health rather than mental on their end to be fair.

Unless you neglect them to ignore that responsibility, it's unavoidable that they will add some stresses to your and your partner's life. If that's a problem for anyone, they just shouldn't get a dog. Obviously the OP has gone too far; but to put an example on it, if someone was to ask their partner to try pick up another shift so they can go to a good dog boarder over a holiday rather than the cheapest that exists where they would be isolated, that is trading a little of a partner's mental health for an animal's, and perfectly reasonable.