Historically, media often relegated women with an intense love for animals to the "lonely cat lady" or "eccentric dog woman" stereotypes—characters whose pets were substitutes for human connection. Modern storytelling has completely flipped this narrative.
A beautiful subversion of this trope occurs when they decide to co-parent the dog. They meet every Sunday at the dog park. They exchange the leash like a baton. Eventually, the dog starts pulling the man toward the woman. The dog is the mediator. The dog brings them back together.
For a single woman, a dog is often more than a pet; it is: