u/Asleep-Speech8664

Recently my husband sent his mom flowers for Mother’s Day and signed the card with his name and his dog’s name, but not mine. When I told him it upset me, he said “the dog has been with me for 10 years.” We’ve been together for 3 years and married for over a year. That comment honestly really hurt me because it felt like he was measuring importance by years and basically telling me the dog ranks above me emotionally.

Since then, I honestly no longer want to help take care of his dog. For context, I work from home, so when my husband is working, a lot of the dog care falls on me. The dog is elderly, blind, deaf, about 35 pounds, and has frequent health/infection issues. I feed him 3 times a day and physically carry him outside multiple times because he can’t find his way out on his own and my husband never really trained him to navigate despite the blindness. I am also not a dog person to begin with.

My husband does take care of the dog when he’s off work, but he works shift work and around 150 hours a month, including 24 hour shifts sometimes, so I pick up a lot of the slack. I also do basically all the housework while he mainly handles yard work.

I’m exhausted and honestly resentful now. Part of me feels like I’m helping maintain his “best friend,” who he openly values more than me. And after the fight, my motivation to keep doing all this caregiving has really dropped.

AITA for not wanting to take care of the dog anymore?

Update: I have not discontinued care for the dog. I just want my husband to hire dog help. I also don’t want to do his laundry or cook for him or clean the floor or the toilets!!!

Update 2: I think another reason why I no longer want to take care of his dog is that I have responsibility but no authority on the dog. In his current state, I think the dog must be put down. The dog is older than 10. He is fully blind, with one remaining eye that is I think infected. My husband doesn’t like taking the dog to the vet because he thinks the dog will die anyways. I got one of the dog’s eyes removed because I figured the dog had glaucoma and I had to convince my husband that a vet should see the eye (he makes $500k annually). The dog is also deaf, and fully incontinent. It is 35 pounds, and needs to be carried out multiple times to potty. We have been living like this for almost a year now. I am burned out. So the card incident fueled me even more, but the underlying reason is that I just have responsibility with no authority and I am sick of this!!!!

Before Mother’s Day, I told my husband he should send flowers to his mom. We’ve been together over 3 years, married over a year, and I’m actually close with his mom too. We only live about an hour away from her. She later sent a picture of the flowers she got, and I noticed the card signed with his name and his dog’s name. My name wasn’t on it. I asked him why he included the dog but not me. He said “the dog has been with me for 10 years.” That made me super upset. I am outside of his core family in his eyes, but I am breaking my back for him. I work full time from home, cook for him, clean the house, do yard work, take care of the dog when he is working. I am his wife for god’s sake.

He thinks I’m overreacting and says it’s normal to send Mother’s Day gifts just from yourself and his dog I take care of when he works. I ended up getting really angry and now we’re fighting over it. Am I exaggerating? Do you add your spouses names on mother’s day cards? My husband has avoidant tendencies and I have been suffering a lot because of it.