After 13 years as close friends, I found myself dating Henry*. He was a chill guy. Kind, considerate, non-threatening. Considering our less than stellar outcomes in previous relationships, I think we were both a little surprised, but there we were.

Henry had a teenaged daughter and like many fathers do, he’d promised a dog as a token of his love, or an attempt to keep her close before young adulthood took her away. Even though there are dogs in shelters begging for a home, they chose the breed they wanted out of a book after reading about its personality traits.

Big mistake, as it would turn out.

It was harder than you would think to find this particular dog. Henry searched around a good while and finally found one in Texas, so he drove 12 hours there and back to pick up this dog he’d never met, a “miniature” English bull terrier. The Target dog. Football shaped, malformed skull, looks like a possum. As this rodent-looking puppy ran toward Henry for the first time, he almost backed out. Let’s face it, most of us try to keep rodents out of our lives…

Henry enjoyed the trip back with the dog sleeping in his lap, but the experience went steadily downhill.

They named him Ammo*. He was a terrible dog.

Having been a dog lover all my life, I was at first sympathetic to the dad-daughter-dog scenario. After all, he had a fenced back yard. How hard could it be? My own dog, Boo, was as independent as I am. At 10 years old she just needed a head scratch, a bowl of food and some wildlife to chase, and she was good to go.

The miniature English bull terrier breed is described as clownish, and I’ll buy that if you mean the type of clowns they feature in horror films. I mean, it has a malformed skull for goodness sake and looks just like a possum. Out of the gate Ammo was big trouble, especially for our relationship. He was like a freight train with an attitude in your living room. All puppies are time-consuming but this one redefined the term. It was quickly evident that the thing couldn’t be left at home while Henry earned the money it would take to keep this dog alive, or at night while he was out with me.

All of the backup plans failed as Ammo’s personality and energy emerged. His ex-wife said “umm, no,” after Ammo spent one weekend there with their daughter. His best friend bailed quickly. So did his parents, who had their own high-maintenance dog. Obedience school and doggy day care started quickly.

Ammo made it a handful of weeks at the first day care, the best in town, before he had his first “incident report.” The staff admitted that Ammo was the third man in, but he was also the one they couldn’t disengage.

Henry, with all the loyalty and protectiveness of a parent, said, “Why didn’t they just use the hose on him? Isn’t that what it’s there for?”

Ammo ended up in solitary confinement and then after the third incident, was not invited back to Camp Bow Wow. He lasted a little longer at the juvy daycare, but that one ended the same way. Expelled — three times.

Ammo chased his tail until he had to go on doggy Prozac.

He got skin infections. He left short, white hairs everywhere. He tore up plastic squeaky toys, dog beds and stuffed animals until the house looked like a trash heap.

He had gas. Farted like an old man.

He got ass infections.

The vet prescribed a salve that had to be applied with a human finger. Henry went back for spray the next day. At one point there were eight prescription bottles on the windowsill in the kitchen, none of them for Henry.

Ammo dragged his infected ass across the carpet and all over the furniture until I was afraid to sit down or take off my socks. Everything smelled like dog.

He attacked other dogs at the dog park and every public service person who tried to approach the house. Henry had to be home and up before the trash man got there, or trash would pile up under the carport like snowdrifts.

Ammo went after small people and children and other animals. One night, he slipped out of his collar during a walk and grabbed a cat by the throat, shaking it for all his 65 pounds was worth. Henry, trying to disengage the dog from the cat, eventually put his hands between Ammo’s jaws and ended up with puncture wounds, antibiotics and physical therapy.

And still, he kept the dog.

Ammo brought exciting things into the house, like a possum playing possum, bloodied and pissed off from a backyard brawl. Before Henry’s father could get there with the snow shovel, the possum was up and running around the house while Ammo threw himself over and over into the plywood petition they’d set up to separate them. I wish they had confused the two and sent Ammo away with pet control. At that point, I would have rather kept the possum.   

The next week it was a raccoon in a rainstorm. Both the possum and the raccoon somehow survived the attacks but with significant damage. I can picture them both in a PTSD support group in Old Hickory, Tennessee right now. Or physical therapy.

This same ass-infected, tail-chasing dog that sent its owner to rehab and dragged nasty rodents into the house wanted nothing more than to snuggle up on the dog-hair-covered, broken down couch, directly on Henry’s face.

For the life of me I couldn’t understand Henry’s loyalty to this dog. He demanded constant attention. He was an isolating animal, unable to be around anyone except immediate family. There were no leisurely walks through the neighborhood. It was always a sprint, the route changing if anything living and breathing was near. Children playing in their own yard? Can’t go by there. Another dog owner walking his best friend? Nope. The walks required special equipment: a harness because a collar wasn’t enough, a stick just in case and a handful of bags to collect Ammo’s deposits. Some days were three-baggers.

I went by one day after work and Ammo was bleeding from a golf ball-sized welt on his side. I asked what was up and Henry said he didn’t know, that the bleeding lump wasn’t there when he left the house that morning. The vet visit the next day revealed BB gun pellets trapped under his skin.

Somebody had shot the dog.

My first thought was, “Man, if I’d had that idea, I wouldn’t have missed. I’d have hit him square between the eyes; put us all out of our misery.”

Henry hadn’t micro-chipped Ammo, so I thought about sneaking over midday and leaving the gate open. The neighborhood kids and public service folks are the only reason I didn’t.

Every date night began with a discussion about what to do with Ammo, and living 30 minutes outside of Nashville didn’t help. There was no spontaneity because after Ammo was kicked out of his third daycare, there were no options and he couldn’t be left awake and alone.

The pause at the end of my dinner invitations became lengthier and followed by a sigh before the answer came, slowly, “Well, I guess I could… but I’ve got to take him out… and then I’d have to pull some things together... It’d be late.”

Forget it.

Henry and I had some good experiences while we were dating, but the dog became more than a practical problem. It was a barrier to intimacy and a symbol of a deeper issue. We didn’t have enough in common. We wanted to spend our days differently, and we couldn’t talk about the elephant, or the Ammo, in the room.

We’d had such a loyal friendship for so long that I didn’t want to insult Henry by telling him I hated his dog, although I didn’t do a great job of hiding it. In the end, Henry had to choose how he was going to spend his time and since I didn’t need him to rub salve into my ass, I was not first on his list.

But still, it was hard to end such a long-standing relationship. That is, until one Saturday night after a big band dance, when my golf instructor asked, “Hannah, do you still have a boyfriend?” I said yes, and he asked, “Where is he?”

“He’s at home with his dog,” I mumbled.

Henry’s most enduring quality is his loyalty. Once or twice, in reaction to my disappointment, he explained that he was trying to do the right thing and live up to a commitment he had made… to the dog.

In a book of my father’s sermons, published when I was about nine years old, I was mentioned along with the rest of my family on the dedication page. The line about me said:

“To Hannah, a lady; kind, considerate, busy. May God be pleased to use her.”

All of my life, my most enduring qualities have been that I am kind and considerate of other people. I facilitate and make people comfortable. I want you, and your dog, to have what you need.

Over time I have started to feel that these attractive qualities in me are closely tied to something pretty unattractive: my ego. I feel like I am more able to handle disappointments and setbacks than you are, that I am the strongest person in the room. Over time I lose my voice in relationships; I am unable to tell you what I need for fear of losing you.

After 17 years of friendship, Henry and I had to call it quits, precisely because of those two enduring qualities of ours.

A strength taken too far becomes a weakness.

This same truth has been proven in the office, strangely enough with dogs. When we moved into an office during our second year in business, I’d occasionally bring my own middle-aged dog, Boo, in with me for the day. She’s an easy dog.

The thing about working with Millennials is that they assume whatever the boss does, they can do too. If you dress casually, they will too. If you come into work late and blow meeting times, they will too. And if you bring your dog to work, they will too. Soon enough, we were all housebreaking a beautiful white lab puppy that belonged to our senior designer. The next thing I knew, we had nine.

Some dogs are better than others, and you learn that when you’ve got nine of them together. Eventually, the dogs were an agenda item at leadership meetings. We discussed having a sign-up sheet to control the number of dogs that were brought in each day. We worried about how the dog owners would feel if we stopped. We discussed the body odor of some dogs. We had a dog whisperer come in to assess the personalities of our dogs and teach us how to help them get along better during a lunch ‘n learn.

There were many times I should have said it was over. Like when Sydney peed on one of our client’s feet every time she came into the office. Or the days I came in to find Millie’s deposit in the middle of my office. Or the number of discussions we had about which dog’s poo it was — it got to where we could tell. Or when it cost $900 to have the carpet cleaned. It should have been over when Hoosier, a hound dog the size of a Volkswagen, had to be chained to his owner’s desk with a forged industrial chain and a 60-pound cement block.

Dogs create a cool vibe in the office. One is a good idea. Two is still good. Nine is a whole other business.

D-day for me was the day I saw Tom, one of our developers, grab a squirt bottle and aim it at Hoosier’s face as he muttered under his breath, “You f*#%ing stink!”

I realized that day that my responsibility was to all employees, not just the dog-lovers. Our strength had become a weakness. We stopped allowing dogs that day.

A month after our breakup, during an emotional conversation, Henry said, “I’d do anything to have you back. Go to church, play golf, shoot the dog…”

And I thought, “Start by shooting the dog.”

But I didn’t say it, because who wants to be in that kind of relationship? That one statement would have meant a long-term commitment, because it’s hard to break up with a guy who shot his dog for you.

And anyway, there was the golf pro…

*Not real name. They’d be pissed.