She's a new mother, and her husband is using the dog to disappear when she needs him to help with the kids. Instead of blaming the dog, blame the husband. He could clean up after the dog, and walk it at other times, or bundle up baby and walk them together. Instead of playing Mother Martyr, she needs to deal with lazy hubby. When the dog is gone, hubby's STILL going to abscond when there's work to do. As he does now.

As for the smell, there's too many cleaners out there that work for me not to roll my eyes. I see this as a symptom of the guy not doing his job as a dog owner.

By the way, being honest about one's evil doesn't make it less evil. No credit for admitting she's selfish here. She'd put that dog down in a minute if she could get away with it, and her vacillations (and mild annoyance) all point to that. Displacing her anger at her spouse on the dog is neither self-aware nor defensible. And she knows it- that's why she uses all of that defensive language. She's not treating the dog right, and all of her "I know I'm not treating it right" won't change that.

By the way, the dog was there before her. Just a thought.

From the LA Times: http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-122005girls_lat,0,1560192.story?coll=la-home-headlines&track=morenews

"Under questioning by Richards, Francis acknowledged in the past, he had accused four other people of extortion. But he said those cases, about which no details were available, were separate from today's charges." He alsp faces 47 charges in FLorida. They include

"He also faces three counts of promoting the sexual performance of children; four counts of conspiracy to promote the sexual performance of children; two counts of using children in sexual performances; four counts of procuring persons younger than 18 for prostitution; two counts of conspiring to procure persons under 18 for prostitution; two counts of selling, distributing or offering to distribute or possessing with intent to distribute obscene material; two counts of prostitution; and one count of trafficking in hydrocodone.

Many of the charges name Mantra Films Inc. and Aero Falcons LLC as co-defendants."

St. Petersburg Times http://www.sptimes.com/2003/04/26/State/Underage__Girls_Gone_.shtml

How much you want to bet this was set up to get him sympathy, so people would ignore the child porn charges against him? He's also a drug dealer, it seems.

I only wish this was karmic justice. The only justice this piece of trash will ever get will be someone shooting him after he goes too far. I doubt he was attacked.

She knows what she is doing. SHe doesn't attack everyone, just him. Blaming him makes it clear this is a classic batterer situation. The violence will escalate if he doesn't get out, and as another letter writer put it, kids will make it worse. Get out, and tell her (by phone) that this is unacceptable behavior, period. Before the police come for the murder scene.

Cary is so wrong here. There's no excuse for that kind of anger. I've gotten the silent treatment before, and not hit people. Hitting is NOT connecting; it's a form of CONTROLLING. After all of thestuff out there about how culturally prevalent the "silent thing" is (Men From Mars, WOmen from Venus, for a big example), excusing this craziness is really inexcusable. SHe's psycho. He wounds like a battered woman.

Leave. The LW needs therapy to see why he thinks he deserves such horrible treatment. For God's sake don't marry her.

Christianity does NOT require this kind of confession. It's not in the Gospels. It evolved as a method of control to keep sexual sin from making people ignore the church in the 12th Century, and even then it was private between priest and confessor. In the 15th Century, Puritians came up with this public confession bull, but even then you did NOT give details. This is not a requirement of Christianity, and I really wish people would not use my Church to justify bad behavior. Then again, people use feminism, conservtism, liberalism, manhood, and all sorts of other good things to try to cover up bad intentions. We need to be better at seeing through these covers.

This is aggression. Yeah, she should have told her husband the truth in the first place, and that stinks. She shouldn't have had the affair (why do I smell alcohol here) either. SHe needs to tell her husband, preferably in a therapist's office so hell won't break loose.

But this guy just wants to break up the marriage. He's a hater. He's probably mad about the marriage, or mad at her, and is using this as an excuse.

The dark side of me says then call his pastor and tell him how EvilNuts just tried to destroy your marriage. That may not work if he belongs to a sect that belives once you have accepted Jesus, you can axe murder people and all will be forgiven (try Mississippi and Edgar Ray Killen's first two trials for the murders of the three Civil RIghts Workers for an example of these saved but sinning types; Jimmy Swaggart is the ultimate example).

Tell. That will undermine his power. If the husband leaves, well, that's it. But doing nothing means he will find out in a way that will be worse, and probably make her look worse. This is the only way to possibly stay married.