We all love our dogs, that's just a given. They are a part of our families and we treat them as such. That's why it's always so concerning when they suddenly change their behavior.
We thought we knew them, but then suddenly something changes and they no longer react the way we'd expect. One Reddit user reached out to the dog community to try and get some answers about his dog's recent behavior changes.
In his initial post, he shared that his three-year-old rescue dog Otis had taken his love for his "person" (aka the poster's wife) to "another level." While Otis had always like to snuggle with the poster's wife, he started getting overprotective to the point where he's aggressive to people who come near her.
The poster knows that his dog is one of those breeds that is often misunderstood, and as a black pit bull this jumping and barking at people can be seen as a bit intimidating, but he clarifies that he never has acted like this before.
It all started a few weeks early when the poster's wife became ill. "A week or two ago, my wife got some sort of stomach bug. She was really nauseous and ill for about a week. Otis is very in tune with her emotions... and during this time didn't even want to leave her to go on walks. We thought it was adorable!"
But now that she isn't sick anymore, Otis still won't leave her side. He's actually started getting extreme separation anxiety when she left. "My wife goes to the bathroom, he cries outside the door. She leaves for work, he mopes by the front door until she gets home. And when she gets home, all he wants to do is drape himself all over her."
While out on walks, Otis has even started bearing his teeth to other approaching animals, even though he never has done this before.
The poster asked the fellow dog owners on Reddit to weigh in to give him tips on this aggression issue before it gets out of hand. They had plans to head to the vet, but the response they received opened the poster's eyes in a big way and changed what type of doctor they needed to see.
"Any chance your wife is pregnant?"
The reply immediately got the question asker's attention with a reply of "Oh sh*t."
People then started sharing their stories of their own dogs becoming incredibly protective of them when they were pregnant.
His wife had already gone to sleep so he couldn't have told her the potential exciting news, but he did reveal that they had been trying to get pregnant.
"It's something we've been trying for for a while which is why I'm kind of kicking myself in the face for not thinking of it," he replied. "Can't sleep now lol. Trying not to get my hopes up high until we know. It would be a great sorry though, if our dog and the internet had to tell us she was expecting."
When he was finally able to update the people anxiously awaiting the results, he was happy to reveal that Otis (and the Reddit comment) had been right!
"The wifey is pregnant! Otis is still being overprotective but it all makes sense now! Thanks for all the advice and kind words!"
Dogs are able to perceive things so much better than we are, it's incredible that Otis was able to figure this out first!
I'm sure when the baby is born they are going to be the best of friends!