I had a hard time deciding on the title for this blog. Contenders included, “Menage a trois”, “Derek and Lulu and Me Make Three”, and “Three’s Company/Three’s a Crowd”, but whichever title I went with, this blog was destined to be about the two loves of my life, my husband Derek, and our dog, Lulu.

The two of them entered my life in short succession Derek in the summer of 2005, and Lulu in March of the following year.  Derek and I met online through Eharmony.com, and Lulu and I met when my colleague Cecilia adopted Lulu’s brother and sister. I had just bought a teeny, tiny dollhouse of a place in San Francisco, and for first time in twenty years, wasn’t a renter in a housing market that tends to prohibit renters from having pets. Lulu was 6 weeks old and weighed about two and half pounds and it was love at first sight. Derek weighed considerably more, and while it wasn’t love at first sight, by the second date, I knew he had major potential.

That potential grew when man met dog. I brought Lulu home the day after I returned from a trip to Morocco. I was totally jet-lagged and unbeknownest to me, was coming down with the flu. Derek met me at my place after work, took one look at Lulu and said, “She’s so small. I’m afraid I’ll squash her!” I was a bit concerned that he wouldn’t take to her, since she was so small and he’d had much bigger dogs, but I had nothing to worry about. Before I knew it Derek was competing with me for snuggle time with Lulu, and I would not have made it through that first night of puppy howling and crying without his help.

The first year you are dating someone is definitely still the honeymoon period. You tend to be on your best behavior, and perhaps tend to show only one side of yourself (the good side, of course!), to your partner. But one thing you can’t fake is the way you relate to animals, especially dogs, who are right there in your face…or crotch, as the case may be.

Needless to say, Derek fell in love with Lulu, and I fell in love with Derek. And the rest is history…sort of. These two love each other so much that sometimes I almost feel like a third wheel. At night Derek tends to finish getting ready for bed before I do (I’m a woman. What do you expect?), and by the time I exit the bathroom, Derek is in bed with Lulu, sweet-talking her and rubbing her belly. Lulu, the little tramp, is lying on her back with her legs spread and she looks like she just had a doggie orgasm. Sometimes I feel like I should go sleep in the other room and give the two of them some privacy.

But seriously, if my husband has another woman in his life and in his bed besides me, I can deal with it, just as long as she has a waggly butt and a cold wet nose.