Who gets the dog after a breakup?

Answered by our go-to dog expert.

This is something people rarely think about when they get a dog. But things happen, and here we are at the point where you have to decide who your dog will stay with.

It's best if the dog stays with whoever spent more time with it before the breakup. That way it will feel more familiar to both the dog and the person. Of course, that person's own wishes matter too. You'll have to come to an agreement based on what's best for everyone involved. The main thing is that the dog still has at least one person of its own after the family has fallen apart.

What the dog feels

Depending on the circumstances, dogs experience their owners' breakup in different ways. Still, dogs tend to cope with these changes more easily than everyone else involved. Even though you can't explain the reasons to a dog or tell it, "Mom and Dad still love you."

If the dog stays with the person it's more attached to, there will be less stress. But circumstances vary, and if it wasn't possible to settle this according to the dog's preferences, the animal will most likely have a harder time. That's something worth taking into account.

No matter who the dog stays with, it has lost one of the people it was attached to. And most likely some familiar routines have changed too, so it's perfectly normal if the dog starts to pine. Usually the peak of this longing passes within a week.

How to help your dog

The main job of the owner the dog stays with is to let it get through the loss calmly and to be ready to support it if that support is needed (just like with us, right?). At the same time, sobbing into the dog's shoulder and lamenting "oh, our poor little orphan" is completely pointless. It only makes the dog more anxious.

You can cuddle the dog more (that will actually help everyone), take longer and calmer walks together, invite it onto the bed and give it tasty treats outside the usual schedule. That way it will understand that, although life has changed, it hasn't really changed for the worse, despite one of its parents being gone.

"I left the family, but I want to see the dog"

A dog can't make sense of the reasons why one of its owners disappeared from its life, just as it can't make sense of that person's sudden appearances after a long separation. So give the dog time to adjust. Don't create the illusion that daddy or mommy might show up at any unpredictable moment.

Sudden visits from a former owner can trigger the dog's anxiety. The dog doesn't understand when to expect its ex-owner at home, so it may get more nervous from all the waiting, keep watch by the door or bark invitingly out of the windows. All of this makes it much harder to adjust to life without one of its owners and can lead to behavioral problems.

If your ex-partner still wants to see the dog, it's better to do it outdoors, in one specific place, always the same one. That place will sort of belong to that person, and it will spare the dog from constantly waiting for them at home.

You can even go to this meeting spot every day and sort of check whether the ex-owner has shown up. And if not, just carry on with your walk. It's like looking for squirrels in the park: if they're there, the dog is happy, and if the squirrels didn't show up, there's always plan B, like chasing a ball or going to see the beavers. This ritual is far less traumatic than meetings at home.

A dog is not a human child. It can't ponder why its parent didn't come this time, and it will easily be distracted by something that seems incomparable to us but is just as much fun from a dog's point of view.

We decided to raise the dog across two homes

Despite all this, dogs can live perfectly well across two homes, as long as the schedule of that life is stable and predictable.

Many dogs happily spend weekends at a country house and come back to the city on weekdays. If instead of a country house there's another apartment where parent number two takes the dog for a few days a week, the animal will quickly get used to that routine.

And all the anxiety will settle down as soon as the dog learns its new, separate rituals with daddy and with mommy. This way of life is far more predictable than sudden visits from the parent who left.

Predictability, and once more predictability

A predictable environment and care, sometimes a little extra, are what matter most for a dog when you've broken up (the same goes for when a dog moves from one set of owners to another).

Sudden visits to the dog at home will have to be crossed off, and meetings, if they can't be avoided, should follow the principle of "always in the same place, but not at home". The main thing is that home doesn't become a place of endlessly waiting for the ex-parent to arrive.

The divorce won't affect the dog's future in any way, as long as you don't project your human feelings about the parents' divorce onto it.