Customer Reviews

When Pets Come Between Partners: How to Keep Love - and Romance - in the Human/Animal Kingdom of Your Home (Howell reference books)

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This book really changed my life. It saved a relationship with my boyfriend of three years. It has forced me to really listen to other people's advice and opinions. It has let me truly see myself for the first time. For all those people who might look at this book in a skeptical light, Your wrong, it is a marvelously written and wonderfully enlightning book and I encourage everyone to read it, even if you aren't having problems with a partner and a pet.

This book really was a very thoughtful account of some psychological ways of thinking about pet problems that are really not about pets but about the people who are involved in relationships and also have pets. I liked the explanation of projection and how we project feelings that we do not want to own as part of who we are onto other people and sometimes onto pets. I found the chapter on grief really helpful because I recently lost a cat. I think the book is an important contribution to animal literature and relationships between people.

My husband Mark says when we got married he entered my biosphere. This came as something of a shock to him, because he really expected to have a relationship like the one his parents had. His mother did not like animals of any sort. Before Mark and I met my household consisted of: one six year old boy and his garter snake collection, a large mutt named Smitty whose head was level with the kitchen table, and a zen master cat named Charlie. We all got along just fine, thank you, but had to make room for Mark. Mark had never been allowed to have pets when he was a kid, except for a series of moribund goldfish which tried to survive in a small round fishtank without benefit of air filters. Learning to care for what were now OUR pets gave Mark the chance to make up for what he had missed as a boy. The dog, however, had never really wanted a Mark in his life. My son was also not always enthused. Mark and Smitty and David were all natural competitors, Smitty ate Mark's breakfast every morning without fail. David listened to cartoons (loud!). Mark's response when he is in a rage is to pretend that the offending party doesn't exist. It's very hard to ignore a dog when he's bigger than you are,and a kid who turns the TV set up full blast to really enjoy Woody Woodpecker. It's not easy to live with a man who is angry at you all the time because he's jealous of your child and your dog either. I felt like I was stuck between all three of them. Maybe if we had had the benefit of Dr. Gold's book we could have solved our problems a lot faster.