Hound House
When my boyfriend of six years purchased his first home, he told me I could live there with him and help out with some of the renovations. In addition to me, he also asked one of his long-time buddies to move in and pay rent to help with some of the initial costs. My first introduction to my new roommate was when he pulled up in a beat-up truck with its front bumper tied up with string, wearing huge dark glasses, a trucker’s hat, and pulling along a huge pit bull by a rope, smack dab in the middle of quiet middle class suburbia.
My boyfriend and I had three cats and his buddy insisted that his dog got along well with cats. We soon found out that this was a horrible lie. Not only did the dog view cats as a meal on four legs but it was ill-trained and a consummate escape artist to boot. This was a 1-year-old pit bull mix with the energy and strength of Hercules whose owner saw no reason to give him regular walks or exercise or even spend time on basic obedience training.
Once this dog put its mind to something, it would do it. In the course of a year, this dog busted through a window, a wood door, a wooden banister, chewed a hole open in a chain link fence and found a way to climb out an 8 foot high kennel. Wooden boards needed to be placed on both sides of the kennel fencing in order to keep things secure and the door chained shut. Plastic gates to try and keep him out or in parts of the house were good for only a couple of hours if no one was around to watch him. The kicker was that our roommate saw no issue keeping the dog locked up for hours on end, despite the howling or endless piles of crap that appeared in his room, he’d just yell at and beat the dog and tell us he was fine where he was.
In addition to the hound of hell, our roommate turned into an inconsiderate lazy bum who smoked in the house when no one was looking despite my asthma, ate food I pulled out for dinner, blocked the driveway so no one else could use it, threw out our items that he perceived as trash, and by winter was leaving out his used dishes and tissues in the living room while he was passed out on the only couch in the house, all the lights and electricity-sucking items on in every room.
Finally, our roommate’s job had him start working at a site two hours away so he was forced to move to an apartment that was closer to the site. Both my boyfriend and I have since sworn off having anymore roommates.
That’s like some Cujo shit.
I feel bad for you, but worse for the dog. It was poorly trained and even more poorly taken care of and probably just wanted some real activity and attention.
This just makes me sad for his dog. Some people should not be allowed to have pets.
Its too bad you couldn’t evict him……b/c technically boyfriend=landlord, no?
I feel worse for the dog. Clearly he was an unfit owner, and that poor dog was simply under-exercized and not given nearly enough attention. Maybe you or the boyfriend should have tried training it, rather than just trying to put it behind even more gates. It might have pissed him off, but it was your house and the dog obviously was in dire need of some help. If he didnt like it, he could always leave. Either way, problem solved.
Cat – My roommate/sister has a pit bull mix — let’s say the dog described above is exactly like her dog. We have busted our butts walking/jogging him to only have him escape 2 minutes later from the fence, we give him as much attention as we can, we research constantly better ways to communicate with a dog… She is not an unfit owner for a dog, rather she and the dog are not fit for each other. Pits have a lot of energy. While the MVWR is a douche that did not take care of the dog, I have to say that I find pit mixes to be a bit overwhelming. And I don’t think the homeowners should have put up with the dog at all. Would you expect to raise a MVWR’s child because they are bad parents or would you call CPS on the idiot’s ass? The poor dog should have been brought to a no-kill shelter or set up for adoption, not thrust upon people who do not want the dog.
I understand having someone else’s pet in the house, but in the end, I didn’t ask to have a poorly trained dog in MY house, but I have asked my roommate to take care of the situation or I will give her no-kill shelter locations and a D-day for getting the dog out. We don’t all have to be magical perfectionists that take care of everything perfectly. To say “I’m not capable of doing that” shows strength and understanding. Had the MVWR said that to themself the moment they got the dog, the poor dog might have gone to a family that had the attention for it.
It took two posts for the animal apologists to come out for this story. These guys hate people so much, that they think animals can do no wrong. Look at the trolls, all saying the same thing: “I feel bad for you, BUT worse for the dog”. That BUT part is my favorite, it basically means a negation of the first half of the statement, eg I’m not racist but …
what a bizarre point of view. it’s not like the dog sought them out just to antagonise them, it was trapped as the pet of the asshole housemate.
i think people feel worse for the dogs because unlike people, they can’t make the decisions and have no choice. It’s not like Michael Vick’s dogs volunteered for dog fighting, any more than little kids volunteer to have shitty parents.
I’m glad to see all the love for the dog. Pitbulls get a bad rep. Bfs and gfs should try to avoid roomies. It encumbers on the romance.
Poor dog.
I would be concerned that your long-term bf is actually friends with this person…wow.
What I don’t understand is how you date someone for 6 years and this is the first time meeting someone who your bf knew well enough to let move into his new house with him…
I’m the poster,
I honestly felt terrible for the dog too and outside of nagging on the guy to walk his beast and giving him ultimatums that he wasn’t allowed to leave it alone at the house for extended periods there wasn’t much we could do since the dog was otherwise well taken care in the eyes of animal control. I honestly don’t think he’ll keep the dog much more longer than another year without someone around to remind to walk it and it’s howling its head off in the new apartment. I harbor no ill will toward the dog and actually wish he’d give it up to someone who wants a jogging buddy or potential agility dog. I’m just not going to take my time and attention away from the care of my own animals in order to enable someone who shouldn’t own a dog to be in a better position to keep it and that dog needed more than I could possibly give anyway.
BTW, the bf hasn’t talked to guy since leaving.
It’s also a lot easier to judge these situations from the outside looking in and when you don’t have 25+ year emotional attachments to a person who is also helping you to fund all the construction projects on your house.
Poor dog, poor roomies. :/
How can you date someone for so long and not know what their friends are like?
I always say no pets, unless I can tell that they actually take care of their pet.
I’m of the opnion that it is extremely common to be friends with someone for a long time and have absolutely no idea what they are like to actually live together with.
What is with everyone jumping on OP for the behavior of the roommate? I’ve had friends that I knew for years before living with them, and would never do so again. You don’t really get to know every aspect of a person until you are spending every day with them, which was probably the case here.
You can work with your co-workers 8hrs a day, 5 days a week and also not really know who they are at the end of the day. People are diffrent monsters in diffrent scenarios. My mother for example is the life of the party around guests and friends but what goes on behind the scenes is a jekyl and hyde scenario with a women that would be calm one minute and freaking out at you the next when the slightest glitch came up, but everyone else thought my mom was a wonderfully personable women!
I’ve met the guy a couple times prior to this, but again, all I got was the impression of a fun-loving, good-natured guy who didn’t always make the wisest choices because he was young still.