Behavior: Lapdog Love

Single girls (and Mickey Rourke) love their lapdogs: they find them comforting, as well as cool fashion accessories. But is there a dark side to this? Are lapdogs allowing some people to avoid risky real entanglements?

For those who ask the question, ‘Which came first the chicken or the egg?’, there is the derivative question, which came first, the lap dog or the lack of a relationship?

Like ladies who live with too many cats, there are those mostly single or living single within a relationship women who use lapdogs as more than accessories. They use them as surrogate companions.

The appeal of the lapdog as a companion when there’s an absence of a human companion is that the dog is dependent, loyal and owned — which is what many women look for in relationships with their men — guys who are dependent on them, loyal and owned by the women. When you can’t get it in a man, there’s always the dog. Some women dote on their lapdogs so much, lavishing them with special food, grooming, doggie clothing and accessories, carrying cases and spa treatments, that to hear about the lapdog’s life, one would think their owner was describing a movie star — and not a canine.

The dark side of lapdogs rears it’s ugly head in the following departments:

* Lapdogs are little and easily dominated. Many women who are afraid of relationships or afraid of men feel less threatened with a little lap dog that they can tower over.

* Lapdogs will go anywhere you take them — unlike men. And if a lapdog misbehaves, you scope it up and put it where you want it. Again, you can’t usually control another human being as efficiently as you can a little dog.

* Lapdogs are in general easier going than most men. Their growling is usually momentary and/or rare, and their whining is remedied by a cuddle. Men are not so easy, as a rule.

Complications can occur when:

*A woman meets a man who must love the dog and accept the dog in order to make the relationship work.

* The woman uses the dog to manipulate the man or puts the dog in between she and the man, the way some women put their children in the middle to avoid intimacy.

* A lapdog can keep a woman from feeling lonely, and while this may seem like a good thing, it can be a bad thing because loneliness is a sign that you need a companion, and a human companion, in the long-run, if they are healthy and kind, is a much better partner than a puppy, no matter how adorable.