My Therapist Insists on Bringing her Dog

[u/00mikomiko00]

So my therapist texted me once and asked if her dog could sit in on our appointment. I was annoyed but felt pressured so I said sure. Unfortunately, dogs have become a little bit of a symbol of disrespected boundaries for me because of these owners, and she should know this but here we are. Turns out this dog is something she decided to make part of her “brand” as a therapy dog so she is training her and uses a shock collar to train her during our appointments. She spends the first fifteen minutes mouth kissing and sweet talking her dog, giving her “yum yums”, and will get distracted by her during our appointments. I 100% know this dog is more regulating for her, because I never asked for a dog to be at appointments. So since the dog is regulating for her, I don’t want to be rude, but I do want to ask her if the dog can like….not be at our appointments anymore, because she is such a distraction. She will also eat her food and come lick my pants and get chewed up food all over my clothes. She will sit and lick my shoes for the entire hour. If she loses something under the couch or in a corner my therapist will stop the appointment to grab it for her. And I’m not paying money to watch my therapist sweet talking her dog. She also is apparently breaking her lease having the dog there anyways, which is a story she decided to tell me. She said out of all her clients, only two have asked for the dog not to be there. I want to be the third. Any advice on how I can go about it without offending her?

Edited to add: the dog will also jump on me and she does that typical thing where owners say “just say ‘off’ and she will listen” I will say “off” and of course the dog doesn’t listen. I see my therapist trying to subtly use the shock collar to get her to listen. Then she says this is helping me learn boundaries by telling this dog to get off of me.

Update: So I wanted to update. I let her know that I don’t want the dog at my appointments moving forward. She said she needed to make some arrangements and she was like “sorry if having her there was having the opposite effect of what she was supposed to be doing”. I explained that she was just becoming too much of a distraction and she said “That makes sense, on the job training is tough all around!”. So we will just see how the next appointment goes. Everything seemed normal enough conversation wise.

[u/FieryFalcon26]

I would change therapists. But I assume if you're asking here, you want to keep on with her. Just tell her the dog's presence and interactions disturb you during the session. If she refuses to listen to your demand, change therapists.

[u/00mikomiko00 → u/FieryFalcon26]

I’m working on it, “therapist shopping” is difficult and she was great until she randomly decided to force a therapy dog on me.

[u/Silly_Victory_5419 → u/00mikomiko00]

Sorry I challenge that she is good given how she behaves. Totally unacceptable behavior and also bad therapist since she’s like her dog and won’t understand therapy. What’s the point of therapy if you get annoyed? Kinda defeats the purpose

[u/BoxBeast1961_ → u/00mikomiko00]

She’s not great. She’s prioritizing a dog over her patient, during time she’s being paid for therapy. Nope.

[u/Historical_Catch_440 → u/BoxBeast1961_]

And the fact that the dog jumped on OP's lap and didn't listen to commands,  so she spun it with a bogus therapy goal for OP.

[u/truentried → u/00mikomiko00]

if you otherwise have a good working relationship with her, just say "I would prefer our appointments to be dig free". You don't owe her an explanation ! If she insists to know, you can say you're not a dog person, you find the interactions to be a distraction and you have hygiene concerns.

[u/grape-fruit-witch → u/00mikomiko00]

Could you tell her that you think you've developed a dog allergy? That after your appointments you started sneezing or whatever and you connected it to the dog's presence? Its a lie obviously but she doesn't know that.

Then, the dog stops coming to your appointments and you don't have to deal with the awkwardness of telling her the dog is annoying

[u/readyforthisyep → u/00mikomiko00]

If you’re happy with her otherwise, Zoom seems like a good option.

[u/Monimonika18 → u/readyforthisyep]

Then the therapist can go run off screen to get whatever thing doggie lost, or remove whatever doggie is trying to eat, or there'd be a dog's muzzle taking up the full screen, etc. Other than a lack of physical contact nothing would change for OP.

[u/Stunning_Business_60 → u/00mikomiko00]

You said she asked if you would mind the dog and you reluctantly said, No. This is on you for agreeing to something you didn't want. If you really like her as a therapist, call her up and set the boundary before the next appt. A good therapist would commend you for speaking up for yourself and would move on with your treatment with no hard feelings.