Do You Choose Your Dog More Carefully Than Your Husband?

Do You Choose Your Dog

MORE

CAREFULLY

than your

HUSBAND?

Annie Kaszina

Copyright

Copyright © 2014 Annie Kaszina

Lulu Digital Edition

All rights reserved.

Also Available in Print

ISBN: 978-1-326-01999-0

This book is not intended to provide personalised relationship advice.  The Author and the Publisher specifically disclaim any liability, loss or risk which is incurred as a consequence, directly or indirectly, of the use and application of any contents of this work.

Published by: Powerhouse Publishing

Printed and bound in Great Britain.

No part of this work may be reproduced in any material form (including photocopying or storing in any medium by electronic means and whether or not transiently or incidentally to some other use of this publication), without the written permission of the copyright holder, except in accordance with the provisions of the copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.  Applications for the copyright holders’ written permission to reproduce any part of this publication should be addressed to the publisher.

For John -

who is my love and my inspiration

Reviews

Dr Annie TOTALLY understands relationships - and talks about them with the sort of humour that comes from insight and true experience … A joy to read

Anne Diamond

BBC Radio Berks

If you want to change your life absolutely read this book. Like so many other women Annie Kaszina has helped, you can learn to be treated with respect. In clear, concise, and powerful ways her book shows you how to get free once and for all of second best relationships. Best of all it helps you discover how worthy you are of being loved.

Dr Lisa Love

Author of the best-seller Beyond the Secret

www.drlisalove.com

This is the funniest book on relationships you are ever likely to read. I suspect a lot of women will read it and realise that they've also spent more time choosing their pet than they have their husbands. Not only is this book filled with startling insights from Annie's 10 years as a therapist. It's also laugh-out-loud funny at times.

Stephanie J Hale

Bestselling Author of Celebrity Authors’ Secrets

www.CelebrityAuthorsSecrets.com

I thought this book would be good.  I didn’t expect it to be an ass-kicking, mind-transforming, unputdownable read.

Annik Rau

Talent Scout and Founder

PONY Express Speaker Training

www.ponyexpressclub.com

Full of wisdom, hope and humour.

Dr Joanna Martin

Shift Enterprises

www.joannamartin.tv

A relationship book with brains, heart, humour and an implementation plan.

John Donnelly

The Machiavellian Troubleshooter

Machiavellian-Trouble-Shooter.com

I struggled for years choosing men I wouldn't even trust my dog to but now with Dr. Kaszina's book no one has an excuse not to be in a healthy relationship. Brilliantly written and heartbreakingly relatable DO YOU CHOOSE is for anyone wondering why they'd rather spend more time with their dog than their partner.

Barbara Davilman

Story Producer at World of Wonder Productions

Author of How to Raise A Jewish Dog

Having spent a long time finding dysfunctional men on the online dating scene before I met my husband, and being a dog lover, it was really easy to relate the message from this book, with the life you know as a dog owner. Great content written in an enjoyable, easy to read style

Veronica Pullen

The Social Marketing Queen

www.veronicapullen.co.uk

This is a wonderful, well-written. well-conceived book of huge potential benefit by a woman who knows her field well, replete with practical, useful exercises to help women emerge from the hard lessons learned in previous relationships, and be far better poised to choose more wisely and intuitively in future.

The Barefoot Doctor

http://www.barefootdoctorglobal.com/

A book that even every gentleman should read to understand somewhat about dogs but even more importantly building and sustaining healthy long term relationships. And ladies, this will help you find your Mr Chivalrous!

Zach Falconer-Barfield

1st Gentleman at The Perfect Gentleman

I'm a big fan of reading to improve your life. This book made me look at my habitual thinking. We can be spectacularly successful in a lot of areas of our lives, yet when it comes to relationships something very different occurs.  Annie is the real deal, passionate and coming from a place of total integrity.  You’ll discover the exact steps you need to take to captivate, and keep, your perfect partner.

Nicola Cairncross,

Amazon No 1 Bestselling Author Founder of

www.TheBusinessSuccessFactory.com

"This fabulously funny and yet seriously deep dive into relationships shines a light into dark and muddled places within that keep us emotionally tethered.  Annie's inclusion of case studies is an opportunity to look in the mirror.

Love the humour and lightness of touch in dealing with sensitive emotions.  This book will certainly have a home on my bookshelf."

Janet Swift

#1 Bestselling International Co-Author of

The Expert Success Solution

www.lifechangingcafe.com

Dr. Annie Kaszina’s new book is a must read for any person, woman or man, who has been in a bad relationship or any person considering getting involved in a relationship. Her book is humorous but so true about how easily we can fall for what we think is love. Many of us have survived and thrived largely because of the amazing work of Dr. Annie.

Dr. Teri K. Strong, M.A., M.Div., Ph.D.

Epilepsy Advocate and former

Most Outstanding Young Woman of America

Dr Annie Kaszina's book is certainly not your standard Find your Mr Right self-help book for women. It does not feed you with fairy tales and success stories that just make you wonder: what’s wrong with me that I cannot find the right guy? Instead, it packs some honest, no-holds-barred insights into an engaging narrative full of entertaining dog metaphors.

Dr Sasha Mitrofanov

www.beauthentic.com

I LOVED this book. I laughed, and I cringed and laughed as I read about the pitfalls we women are so vulnerable to stepping into. Although I am now in a very happy relationship, I very much saw the way I used to be in a new, and accurate, light. If you are in a relationship, have been in one, or want to be in one, this book will enhance your life.

Dr Shoshana Garfield

Trauma Recovery Specialist

http://shoshanagarfield.com

From cover to cover, you will laugh and love the insights you're getting from Dr. Annie Kaszina about the most important relationship in your life.  

Leil Lowndes

Bestselling author of How to Talk to Anyone

Preface

‘Me or the Dog!’

‘You have to choose between me and the dog!’ my partner snarled.

Reader - I did. Without even thinking: ‘It’s got to be the dog,’ I said.

Off Roger stormed, slamming the door behind him, leaving me as speechless as he was, not knowing where my words had come from. You see, we’d been together for years. We had a house together, history together; we’d had rabbits together; we’d even - as I saw it - had a dog together. Admittedly, the rabbits and the dog had been ‘glue animals’, pets that I’d hoped would bring us closer together by bringing more love into our lives.

That was the problem. My partner and I had been together for quite a while and the gloss had come right off the relationship. It had started out as a whirlwind romance. It had been the two of us against the world. It turned out we were very good at surviving, at fighting...  So good that we ended up fighting each other. Rather a lot. It turned out we weren’t terribly good at communicating.

Not that either of us saw that as a fatal flaw in the relationship. We didn’t actually have a problem with the downhill view of relationships. One opinion we shared was that relationships quickly reach their peak and, from then on, there’s likely to be a steady - but SLOW - downhill journey. You would not believe how long it took me to realise that our relationship had been nose-diving for years - like a stone falling, falling down an impossibly deep well...

My partner’s father - who had not a single romantic cell in his wiry little body - referred to romance as ‘narishkeit’, or foolishness. My own father, who saw himself as a kind of mystic - ‘Mystic Morris’ - was forever making dark prophesies about the future. An all-time favourite Mystic Morris-ism was: ‘When you live together, love flies out of the window.’

My partner used to joke about keeping the windows shut. I used to tell myself that It would never - could never - happen to us, because there was Passion in the relationship. That Passion translated into the fights and the making up.

Over the years, the fights got worse and the making up less sweet. That’s where the ‘glue rabbits’ and ‘glue dogs’ came in. The rabbits had no idea of the heavy responsibility that lay on their fragile little shoulders and they died in short order - giving me something else to break my heart about.

Our first dog turned out to be a canine psychopath. Small, beautiful and quite evil. He had a bark that could shatter crystal. He spent long hours gazing up at the night sky and planning some evil surprise for us - like urinating in my business shoes when I was rushing to leave the house for a job interview. Or walking past my partner’s beautiful designer loafers and nipping off the tassel as he went. Or attaching himself, limpet-like, to legs and raping everyone and everything he came across - from an heirloom teddy bear, to my monstrously buttoned-up father, to the cute little eight-year-old girl next door.

At times, I found myself thinking that the ‘glue dog’ and my partner might just have been similarly anti-social kindred spirits. Still, the day finally came when my partner hissed: ‘No more!’ and I bowed to the inevitable and rehomed Orlandino Maria Piccolomini - who went off without a backward glance.

That was the day I first discovered that needy doesn’t mean loving. Orlandino needed a human, or two, to dance attendance on him. For a long time that meant my partner and me. But that didn’t mean he actually loved us. Truth to tell, I don’t think he even liked us. He had a trick of rattling the French doors directly beneath our bedroom every morning, around five a.m. The noise his obsessive rattling made could have raised the dead. But the moment my partner staggered into the kitchen, Orlandino turned on him a look of contempt and got back into his basket to finish his night’s sleep...

There was only one lesson I learned from the bruising experience of being Orlandino’s human: I learned that it would be insane to repeat the same mistake again. But there was still the need for a ‘glue dog’ in my life.

After months and months of wheedling and cajoling, my partner agreed to get another ‘glue dog’ - provided I did my research. The implications were very clear: getting another dog was purely my responsibility and if it all went horribly wrong, I would have messed up and I would be punishable in perpetuity.

There was a lot at stake, for me - but one thing I’d discovered by then was that I had a talent for research. By this time, I’d done a PhD in 20th century Italian Literature and discovered an unknown Italian writer - who shared a surname with a popular brand of chocolates. I duly wrote about him and this writer became my own, my teeny tiny claim to fame, in the teeny tiny world of Italian academics. For perhaps as many as ten people in the whole world, I was the ‘go-to’ authority on an unknown writer who shared his name with a brand of chocolates (and industrial machinery, as it happens). That was enough for me.

I set out to research my next dog - properly. I duly spent six months reading dog magazines (from one I learned that the best way to stop dogs fighting is to insert your finger into one dog’s anus - something that most people don’t seem to know). I interviewed breeders and discussed different breeds with dog owners. I made it my business to research every possible aspect of my next prospective ‘glue dog’, so I would get it absolutely right. I spent months talking about temperament, house-training, gender, grooming requirements, barking and behaviour around children. I even took into account whether or not the breed would trigger asthma - not that either my partner or I were asthmatic, but someone who passed through our house might be. I was on a mission to find the ultimate irresistible, hypoallergenic snuggle puppy.

And I found her.

Sharon Shih Tzu was a princess among dogs. She was tremendous fun, but she was also a well-behaved little girl. She was bright and well intentioned. She was charming, loving and sincere.

But she still wasn’t the perfect ‘glue dog’.

It turned out she was competition - at least, that’s how my partner saw it

That’s why he turned round to me, that day and said:

‘It’s me or the dog!’

I looked at the wonderful, undemanding little bundle of joy on the floor who always made me feel like a million dollars. Then I turned my gaze to the snarling, resentful human by my side.

That was the biggest Aha moment of my entire life:

I had put much more effort into researching my dog than I ever had into choosing the partner with whom I shared my home, my life and my finances, not to mention my body, mind and spirit.

That was the start of my journey to wholeness, happiness and sanity.

It wasn’t an easy journey. I knew I’d messed up. I knew there had to be another way to do relationships. And I knew there had to be a lot that I didn’t know. But there was a problem: I didn’t know what I didn’t know. There was more as well - I was tempted to say: ‘I’m ashamed to say, there’s more as well’ - but shame serves no useful purpose. Black-and-white thinking serves no useful purpose. Let’s just say I needed to develop ‘a more nuanced view of myself’. Let me tell you what I mean.

When I was still living with the partner, I had a lovely friend called Susie. She was the sweetest, gentlest woman on the planet. Whereas I stood up for myself with my argumentative partner, she tolerated her partner’s selfish ways, his ill-tempered rants and his constant leering - or worse. She broke her heart about it, strived endlessly to be an even better girlfriend and tried to love him into becoming a reformed character. When the pain and the disappointment got too much, she’d often phone me. One day, I said to her, ‘You’ve got to stop being a doormat, Susie.’

Susie was such a sweet person that she took my words lying down. At the time, I felt quite pleased with myself because I’d laid it on the line with her...

It was many months before I realised that I was a doormat, too - albeit a mouthy doormat. I hadn’t realised that being mouthy doesn’t stop you being a doormat: it’s not what you say, but what you do that counts. I wasn’t stupid - not in other areas of my life, anyway. I was quite clued-up about relationships, in general - just not my own. Like a lot of women, I’d read a lot and thought and talked about relationships a lot. But the log in my own eye was just so big. Still, once again, I set to work researching the problem …

I joined a support group and discovered that I wasn’t a lone idiot. Too many bright women just seem to lose their clear-sightedness and their natural wisdom when it comes to Love. My time in that support group taught me many things: the most sobering thing of all was that knowing was not synonymous with feeling or implementing.

There was one woman in that group who stood out for me, then and stands out for me still. She ‘talked the good talk’ better than the rest of us. She’d been in a violent relationship, left, learned her lesson and ‘moved on’. She could see her ex-partner for what he was and she was never going to settle for anything less than Mr Wonderful. In future, it would all be about respect, boundaries and unconditional love. She’d ‘done her journey’ and she was good to go.

And go she did, at break-neck speed. Right back into the arms of her violent partner—who attacked one of her infant twins, also. Social Services had been involved before and cautioned her before. This time, she lost her children. For good. The thought of that poor young woman saddens me still.

Not many women mess up as irreparably as she did. But too many of us read, discuss and know all the answers... without being able to implement them in our own lives. That is what this book is all about.

If you’re like me, you’ve never truly prioritized your own happiness.  When I decided to change my relationship life, I realized the time had finally come to put myself at the heart of my own world.  What I discovered has enabled me to go from serial relationship disaster to enjoying a more loving, committed relationship with a wonderful partner than I would ever have imagined possible. It’s been an amazing, hugely rewarding journey that has had a positive impact on every area of my life.

What I couldn’t foresee was that I’d become an internationally sought out women’s relationship coach, helping other women to find the happiness, and self-worth that had always seemed beyond their reach.  I’ve spent ten-plus years working with wise, wonderful women whom any man would be lucky to have, yet who’ve settled for all sorts of unworthy men, including jerks, creeps and players. They weren’t stupid. There was just something that got in the way of them applying their wisdom and considerable personal resources to their situation. Coaching these lovely women has been about developing a language they could truly hear and strategies they can confidently implement.

The unconventional, left-of-centre angle used in this book is what I’ve discovered works phenomenally well for hundreds and hundreds of clients, transforming their self-worth and the quality of their relationships - usually inside 3 months. In fact, it’s an angle that works beautifully even when more conventional approaches have failed. Laughter and storytelling can reach deep down and transform your emotional horizons, whereas explanations, knowledge and instructions may well leave you cold.

You don’t need me to tell you that change can be really, really hard - if you have to work at it. Transformation, on the other hand, can be quick and surprisingly easy when you just open to it. Laughter and anecdote are two powerful ways of opening to transformation. I dare you to try them. Play with them - and have fun with them.

And let’s have a serious moment, too. You can just read the book, tick it off your list and then move on to the next one. Or else, you can take a few moments to do the exercises that have been designed to help you make key, lasting mind shifts, as quickly and easily as possible. So quickly and easily, in fact, that they might almost seem ‘too simple’. (Of course, you can make it harder for yourself, if you want to. But why would you?) Committing that little bit of time and effort is all you need to do. It’s a very simple and powerful sign that you’re sending to yourself about committing to your own happiness. You might, also, like to develop a more ‘nuanced’ and forgiving view of yourself.

I’m guessing you’ve tried fighting yourself and giving yourself a hard time. That’s called ‘trying to run a race with one foot nailed to the floor’. Will you let me help you to laugh, get playful and curious, instead? When you do that, the nail will disappear all by itself, leaving you free to not just run the race, but win the prize.

Enjoy!

Chapter 1

‘The Fairy Dog-Mother Delusion’

The patter of little paws came into my life for a reason. You see, ‘You complete me... ’ were three little words my partner never said.

Actually, they were three little words I’d never even fantasised about until I watched Jerry Maguire and then they started to represent everything I needed to hear - the magic bullet for everything that was wrong with my relationship.

By this time, unlike Jerry Maguire and the less memorable Renee Zellweger character, my partner and I had been together for years, without that dramatic moment ever occurring when the force of how much he loved and needed me hit him like a sledgehammer.

That was the problem in the relationship, as I saw it. There I was doing everything I could to make my man happy, trying desperately to be the WD-40 in his glitch-ridden life and he still didn’t get it. He still didn’t see that I completed him. When he finally did, then we’d be able to start that long meander into the Happily Ever After.

There was just one problem. My partner - let’s call him Roger - had sat through Jerry Maguire with me. He’d even mildly enjoyed it. But for him it was just a fiction, light entertainment. He hadn’t internalised what I saw as ‘the message’ of the film. I may have identified completely with the Renee Zellweger character, but he did not identify in the slightest with Jerry Maguire. Roger watched films from a male perspective for light entertainment; he didn’t look for enlightenment and encouragement.

Roger didn’t think in terms of me completing him. He thought in terms of me servicing him.

Roger was every bit as arrogant and self-serving as Jerry Maguire. He just didn’t have Jerry Maguire’s ‘road to Damascus’ moment. Or, at least, not a ‘road to Damascus’ moment that would produce a lasting change of heart. We fought, we made up, he made the right noises about how things would be different this time and they never were.

He never completed