One Week Later: Heather Tells Me Where to Put It

One week has passed since I publicly chastised Heather about
the way that she lets the dogs destroy the house.

Are we still living together? Are we still engaged? Was she
pissed off?

The best way for me to answer is to repeat what she told me
just prior to going to sleep last night:

"You can shove that ultimatum up your ass," she said.

We were joking around. We spent some time discussing the issue
throughout the week and over the weekend. Not as much time as
I would have liked... but I am the woman in the relationship.
I like to "talk about it" while Heather likes to autopilot the
relationship.

Heather spent the first couple of days acting like she wasn't
mad, venting her frustrations to her family and generally
ignoring my request.

Fair enough.

She then spent the next few days cleaning the house. Which, as
I told her, was great... but not the issue. She was dealing
with the symptom, not the illness. Given that approach we'd be
cleaning for the rest of our lives.

She finally brought the doggie crate over to the house and we
set it up over the weekend. Unexpectedly, Humper is cool with
it. He's a completely wild and crazy dog so I expected him to
be bouncing off the insides of the cage and generally making a
ruckus. But he didn't. He went to sleep.

Heather and I concluded that Humper has probably lived in a
cage before. We want to get him some manners so that he
doesn't have to live in a cage for the rest of his life.

Secretly, although she'll never admit it, Heather loved
watching Six Feet Under last night with Humper in the cage...
not jumping up on her every three seconds.

Did I win?

No, we both won and we both lost depending on how you look at
it. We had an argument, which is never good. And the dogs are
far from being under control. But we began the process of
tackling an issue together. And I got to piss off Heather's
parents which helps John look good... that's an unplanned bonus.

It wasn't a fun week.

Now we have to followup on last week with some good training.
It's going to take some time for us to figure out what we're
doing. And then some time for the dogs to actually learn
something. It's an investment. With a few months of hard work
now we'll have a cleaner living environment for years to come.

And I hope that Heather will learn something about the dogs.

I say "dogs" but as yet there is no plan for Pupper or Bear.
Heather is convinced that they don't pee in the house, but I
heartily disagree. Even prior to Humper, I came home to a hot
steamer on three out of five days.

There's work to be done. But we're doing it together. I love
Heather immensely and certainly won't throw away nine years of
a relationship for something that can be fixed.