it's the little things tripping you

[ratcreature]

I'm reading an erotic romance novel, so the characters are having sex early on, and the heroine's and hero's chemistry is decent, but I just can't get into the sex scene, because when the heroine woke up in the morning her dog was mentioned, and she didn't take it with her. So the heroine and hero had this chance meeting (well actually their second, but that's kind of irrelevant) some time before noon, and eventually we are getting to marathon sex in the evening after they do a lengthy lunch, and the heroine never got back to her apartment for her dog at any time.

How am I supposed to like a character who just forgets their dog because of pants feelings? Also it will certainly have peed and pooped in her apartment at this point.

Comments

[lilacsigil]

Pretend it's a tiny house-trained dog that thinks it's a cat, like my aunt had! She would pee outside on walks but strongly preferred to use the litterbox.

[ratcreature]

Here people don't really do that, even with tiny dogs, so that didn't even occur to me. It was a dachshund though, so that could work. For the pee at least, but I think even with that you can't leave the poor dog for over a day (the sex dragged on into an overnight stay).

[lilacsigil]

People don't really do that here, either. It was a strange dog!

[ratcreature]

My brother told me one one of his two dogs doesn't like to go if you look at her, so clearly some dogs are just strange. (And it's not housetraining trauma where she got scolded for peeing by some human seeing that -- he had her since a puppyhood and did the whole positive reinforcement of praising and treating when she went outside, and just picked her up when she went inside, and her housetraining went well.)