Getting over your fear of dogs
‘Ready to Love’: Why Darin letting his Labs run loose wasn’t a bad idea
On last night’s episode of OWN’s “Ready to Love” Season 2, Darin and Ashima were butting heads again over Darin’s dogs. And while Twitter is debating about why it’s not a good idea to let your dogs loose on someone who is afraid of these four-legged animals, I’m on the fence. I went from being a child who was completely uninterested and terrified of dogs to someone who pays her bills dogsitting and dogwalking. Talk about a 180-degree turn! But I also understand where Darin was right and wrong.
Recommended Read: “Dogs and dating: The no-dogs-on-bed rule ~ What do you do when your significant other doesn’t like dogs in your home?”
So what happened to pit viewers against each other in last night’s episode? Ashima, who had already expressed her fear of dogs, came to Darin’s home with the goal of meeting his ex-girlfriend. While several “Ready to Love” cast members were either interrogated by the exes (or vice versa), Ashima was more distracted by the two ginormous Black Labs who greeted her at the door to really be able to focus on Darin’s relationship reputation. And as a dog lover, I think Darin and Ashima could’ve handled this situation better. Here’s how.
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What made me get over my fear of dogs?
When my mother decided she wanted a dog, she never asked her 9-year-old (me) about the idea. When we arrived at my godmother’s house, my goal was just to hang out with two of my godsisters. I was informed that my godmother’s Labrador Retriever had puppies, but that meant nothing to me. Then my mother came out with this golden and black dog in her arms. I ignored the dog, who had a chewed-up tail, and went back to chatting with my godmother and godsisters.
But I knew something was off the minute my mother’s facial expression went from excitement to sadness. The Labrador Retriever had been biting off the tail of that golden dog. Why? Because the dog looked totally different than all the other Black Lab puppies. The father was a German Shepherd who’d gone about his business, and the mother just wasn’t feeling the fact that this dog looked like the dad.
So, she was basically trying to kill it. When we got ready to leave, my mother still had that dog in her arms and I was wondering when she was going to put that thing back in the yard where it was before. She got in the car with it, and I moved as far away from it as possible.
If you know the person you’re dating is a dog lover from the very beginning, don’t expect this person to magically not be into dogs later on.
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No matter how many sob stories she told me about saving this golden dog’s life and showing me a half-eaten tail, I didn’t care. That dog needed to go to someone else’s home. Clearly, I lost that battle. She named the dog “Shep” — as in German Shepherd — to spite the mother of the dog. Shep ended up on our back porch. Meanwhile, my (sneaky) mother knew the days that I was assigned to wash dishes and clean the kitchen.