Cockblockin Pooches

Jamie Silverman
Sep 4, 2018 · 4 min read

I love animals. My dad’s a vet. My brother’s a vet. My brother’s wife is a vet. Between my entire family, we have 7 cats and 4 dogs. It’s quite literally a zoo over at my house when we all get together. So there’s very little question about my appreciation — nay adoration — of all furry creatures.

In between visits to the zoo, I live a very typical Manhattan life. I work insane hours, am constantly training for races and rides and multitudinous other athletic endeavors, I have a special friend who I see quite regularly, I write lots of blogs and I just launched a podcast. I’m busy. You get it. So when it came time to adopting a pet of my very own, and the option was between a dog and a cat, I went with the easy option — feline love.

Enter Lola. A tiny, 4.5 lb, itty bitty wisp of a black cat who cuddles up next to me at night, gives me extra snuggles when i’m sad, and in the rare instance where she feels irritated with me, has even been known to scratch a bit. She also has excellent douche-dar and makes sure to let me know when she hasn’t liked my gentlemen friends in the past by vomiting in either a public or private place in my apartment for me to discover at some later point. I love her.

After ten blissful years of living with Lola, I started seeing a special friend, who, on one of our first dates, admitted his complete love and affection for dogs and veritable disdain of cats. He also said he had every intention of getting a pooch to call his own some point in the near future. So after months of searching high and low for the perfect pooch, he found Bernie, nee Ryan, an adorable, loving little guy adopted through the Sato project, who came to America straight from Puerto Rico.

When it was time to go pick him up, we drove up to Duchess county and I have to say, it was love at first lick. He was so cute and cuddly and sweet — not at all the sort of behavior you’d expect from a dog who likely had to beg for his food most of his life. So we took him home, excited to let him bond with his new forever family.

Ironically, even though I grew up with animals, I never experienced the responsibility of training and raising a puppy. He’s a year old but was never really properly trained and still had some puppy-like tendencies. There’s not a single chew toy we can bring home with any soft or stick-outy parts that lasts more than an hour, and crate training a pooch in a studio apartment is more than a bit of a challenge.

But more than the expected challenges of bringing a child into our lives, was the unexpected impact he’d have on our sex life. The first week with our little man resulted in no sex whatsoever. The dog was too new, needy, confused and out of his element for us to attempt an activity that clearly excluded him. Some subsequent attempts proved successful but more often than not, rushed. Then, we got into the habit of distracting him with a Kong and a treat. But this was all before we brought in a private puppy trainer to teach us the finer points of doggy etiquette. We were taught to not use the crate as a punishment (i.e. locking him up so mom and dad could get some private time) and, his treats were to be dispensed throughout the day so we didn’t want to keep using those as distraction bait. Poochy was an adorable — albeit major — cockblock.

To exacerbate matters, last week, after a half bottle of pink wine with a girlfriend, I decided to throw caution to the wind and attempt a bit of sexy time on the couch while the dog played with his toy. Not two minutes in, poochy was sniffing our business. And I mean EVERYWHERE. We paused, hoping he’d bust a move, to no avail. Then, much to our chagrin, we looked down AND POOCHY HAD A BONER. Appalled, we stopped (the literal definition of coitus interruptus), withdrawing from one another. But it only got worse. Bernie climbed onto the bed and proceeded to hump me. I KNOW.

Well, that was a few weeks ago and fortunately, we’re two creative people who despite all opposition, have been able to find ways to get ours. We also consulted with our tainer and after getting some pointed advice on how to deal with Bernie’s….excitement, I’m please to report that our little humping poochy problem has definitely taken a turn for the better. Each time he humps me, I still don’t know whether to laugh or cry. And even though I’m more than a little terrified of his red rocket, it doesn’t make me love the guy any less.

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