Some context: 10 months ago I (21F) adopted a dog. Obviously when you walk a dog, you bump into a similar group of people every day from the local area who are also walking their dogs.
One guy (~40M) I met there had a fairly obscure breed of dog (this is relevant later), and my dog enjoyed playing with one of his dogs. It started out completely normally chatting to him every few days when I saw him, but at some point I felt it start to shift and started to feel a bit uncomfortable talking to him as it felt like he was trying to chat me up.
He never said anything directly, but there were several small red flags. He eventually asked for my number under the reason “we can meet up to let the dogs play together” which I was fine with (this was before there were so many red flags), and later that day I get a message from him saying “so what are you up to?”
Which I ignore because he has my number solely to communicate about the dogs, and I avoid him from then onwards, and have only bumped into him twice since then.
Flash forwards to today: There’s a lady and some kids with a dog of the same obscure breed at the local park. I was cautious at first, concerned that this guy would be there, but I then realised this dog was significantly smaller (turns out she was just a puppy).
I start talking to this lady after my dog goes to play with hers and when she confirms she is this same obscure breed, I mention that I thought it was, and that there’s a guy here who owns two of them but I avoid him because he made me uncomfortable and I felt like he was trying to hit on me.
TURNS OUT THAT’S HER HUSBAND. And they’ve just got a new puppy of the same breed. And he’s at the kiddie park at the edge of the field with the other kid. I showed her the message he’d sent me when she asked, and she flipped out and called him over.
She then called the number from my phone and his nephew answered. I’m unsure if he’d given his old phone to him or if he’d left his phone at home and the nephew had picked it up, but she started screaming at him because it was saved under her husband’s name in my phone along with his dogs’ names.
I got out of there ASAP. She called me later on her phone after retrieving my number and asked me further details of which I gave as much as I could, but I’ve tried to distance myself from the conversation.
She said the message he’d sent me was very close to their 15th anniversary. I don’t want anything to do with splitting apart a family who’s been together 15 years and have 3 kids together. My gender as people kept assuming I am male. 😂 The dog was a Boerboel. I didn’t originally want to say the breed as I was worried it’d give away too much info.
Also for the smaller red flags, generally they were things I could write off if it was only that which happened, but there were so many little things that it accumulated- he often seemed a bit too eager to meet up at the park for our dogs to have a play date, and most of the times he suggested were after dark.
On one occasion I was using the exercise equipment at the park and he came over to give me advice and used each piece of equipment after I’d finished on it. The vibes were generally just off and when all of these little things combined alarm bells started ringing. There were other things as well but I can’t recall them off the top of my head.
Sounds like he's the one who messed up.
negreaves (OP)
I mean that’s true, I just feel awful (mostly for the kids who witnessed all of this)
Husband here. I would never have done anything like this. Look, the biggest red flag of all is him not mentioning that he is married. This is what I do, whenever I chat up a woman.
Which, of course, I do all the time. I like to be friendly. I like chatting about things, and frankly women are just better at chatting then men (just my take). But if its a woman, ballpark my age, then the existence of my wife will get mentioned within 15 minutes. Because I'm not looking to cheat on her. This guy obviously was.
You were literally just living your life girl.
Sounds like someone is in the doghouse at the very least.
Not a eff up. You don't know if he's done this before etc and it could be the final straw for her. If it were roles reversed, you'd want to know!
negreaves (OP)
Given her reaction I’m assuming she had suspicions at the very least, most people wouldn’t immediately blow up, they’d try to reason around it.
My wife started a dog-walking meetup for one of our dogs who loved to walk with groups. Eventually it grew to significant size (more than 1500 names signed up, although we never saw most of them in person). She was plagued by men joining and immediately sending creepy private messages to female members. She had to kick quite a few men out of the group.
Okay, but what kind of dogs are we talking about OP?
negreaves (OP)
I didn’t want to say so as not to give away too much info, but they’re Boerboels, so huge dogs, which is why I knew the puppy was a different dog since she was only M-L rather than 70kg.
"What are you up to?"
Maybe I'm just overly friendly but that doesn't seem like he was flirting with you 100% no benefit of the doubt. I think her reaction to it implies he's done this more than once and she knows his intentions were not to just be doggy pen pals.