My friend [33/F] is being awful to her new, severely anxious dog. I tried to gently talk about it and she got extremely defensive and "called me out," what do I do?

My friend Mary's first dog, Powder Puff, was spoiled beyond belief by her and her husband. Mary adored Powder Puff and would do anything for her. Mary then had a baby, and about a year after that, Powder Puff died of old age.

Mary was extremely upset and decided within a few weeks to get another dog. She asked me to be a reference to vouch for her with the rescues and I happily agreed to.

Mary's toddler is a year old now and very energetic. She screams and shrieks non-stop, she walks and crawls, she pinches, pulls hair, and hits. Mary is extremely sensitive about anyone saying anything remotely negative about any of this, and says her toddler has the right to be a baby and not be judged for it, but I didn't think much of it because I don't know anything about kids and I don't really care enough about how people raise their kids to care either way.

Before Powder Puff died the toddler did chase her around, corner her, and try to grab her, and Mary carefully prevented the toddler from getting to Powder Puff. She said she would do the same with the new dog.

So she got Candy Cane and she was very excited for me to meet Candy Cane. I met Candy Cane after a few weeks. The dog is tiny and absolutely terrified. The dog is beyond terrified of men and starts quietly growling when any man comes in the room. The dog is terrified of the baby especially the non-stop shrieking. The baby is about three times the size of Candy Cane. Multiple times Mary has not been paying attention and the baby has gotten extremely close to Candy Cane and cornered her. Candy Cane has growled and even fake-lunged (bluff) then Mary screams at Candy Cane and shoves her away. Mary also yelled at Candy Cane and shoves her when she growls at men. This includes Mary's husband. Mary's husband does want to bond with the dog but the dog does not want to.

Mary believes that the dog thinks that she has to protect Mary. So she believes that by yelling at and pushing the dog, she's teaching the dog that she does not have to protect her.

The dog has fear-bonded to Mary and clings to her and is terrified of anyone else. Mary finds it annoying. Especially when she is holding her toddler and Candy Cane is terrified of the toddler. Then Candy Cane just starts pacing and circling frantically.

Candy Cane does a lot of pacing, circling, and panting. She also does a lot of licking. This annoys Mary and Mary will shove her off when she does this.

Mary is already defensive because she feels that her relatives judge and criticize her toddler and her mothering which is extremely angry and upsetting for her. She knows that I don't like kids (she's known me for years and everyone knows I don't like kids, it's not at all personal about her kid) so we're already sort of on thin ice because of that, on the other hand she knows I really don't care enough about kids or parenting to judge her on parenting.

But I wasn't sure how to bring up the way she treats Candy Cane because she's already extra sensitive about being judged and I didn't want to trigger that.

So at some point when she brought up Candy Cane's growling and how she doesn't like it, I just started talking about my own life long anxiety which has been crippling and even disabling at times.

And how plenty of people have found my behaviors annoying and off-putting, but being scolded or yelled at for them or myself soothing behaviors only made my anxiety much worse.

I said how Candy Cane really has no way to soothe herself and maybe it might help if she could get on some kind of anti-anxiety medication.

Mary got super sarcastic and said, "wow, so you think I am mistreating my dog, and you think you're being really subtle about it."

I said, "that is not what I said at all." Mary got even more sarcastic and replied, "wow you sure are being defensive about it." I replied, "well , that's not what I said." Mary said, wow, look at you, I'm fine, you're more bothered than me, why are you being sooooo sensitive?"

At that point I just dropped the topic because it was obvious she was pissed and wasn't going to have a normal conversation about the topic.

But now I'm also feeling sick about the whole situation. It's clear we're not going to be able to talk about it. I feel awful that I actually gave her a recommendation to get this dog. I feel awful for the dog and have no idea what to do.

tl;dr: my friend is being horrible to her new dog, talking about it went nowhere, I don't know what to do.

Submitted September 03, 2022 at 12:11AM by Last_Mud6400 https://ift.tt/Icm7NSx