The cult of the dog mom

How hearing my boyfriend refer to me as "mommy" in front of a puppy changed my life?

I never intended to be a dog mom. When I first began longing for a dog in 2018, I was living alone in Los Angeles, two years into a nearly four year period of being single. By that point, being single was a choice. Online dating felt like work, and I knew I wasn’t ready for a relationship, but wanting a dog was perhaps nevertheless a warning sign of lon…