Narcissistic Abuse & Your Pets

The narcissist can be very harmful to your pet and there are quite a few ways different narcissists treat an animal. Some appear loving. Some are indifferent and some downright abusive. While others use the animal for narcissistic supply.

The commonality with all narcissists, however, is they don’t emotionally care about animals, any more than they emotionally care about people. Similar to their children, animals can give a narcissist major significance in the community. Acting like an “animal lover” makes them appear empathic, loving, and kind.

My abuser presented himself as a dog person, but I learned later every time he got a new supply he also got a new dog, completely discarding the previous pet. For him, dogs were the perfect tool for supply. Dogs crave your attention, and will forever love you unconditionally, no matter how they’re treated. Dogs are also obedient and subservient and happy to see you which feeds the narcissist's need to be valuable and important.

Dogs are used as status symbols

I had a huge Turkish Sheppard and he regularly accused me of only taking the dog out to get attention. That was never my concern. I was more worried about the dog messing on my rug. When he assigned me the specific motivation of trying to get attention through our dog he was really confessing to his own desires. He wanted to be seen as an elite person with an exotic foreign dog.

He was insanely jealous anytime he heard someone came up to me to admire our dog. The truth was he viewed our dog as an extension of himself. It infuriated him that people came up to me. It was ridiculous because I was the one that took care of the dog, never him. He just wanted to use the dog to look powerful and intriguing.

Sharing a pet with a narcissist can be similar to having children with them. They will undermine your authority and do anything to appear to be the better parent and alienate you from them.

They undermine your ability to care for your pet

At the beginning of my relationship with my abuser, he told me he wanted to take me to our local dog shelter to get me a dog for my birthday. I was completely on board even though he had no job or money and I would…