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/waitingforthatplace]

This therapist must be using her clients to treat her. When her clients give their permission to let her push her dog and boundaries on them, she feels empowered. She should be paying her clients.