We Need to Talk About the Unneutered Dog in Love Is Blind: After the Altar

When Netflix dropped the Love Is Blind: After the Altar Season 3 trailer on January 31, it raised a few big questions about the romantic lives of its stars. What happened between Raven and SK, who announced they were dating at the reunion, only to break up after rumors surfaced about SK’s infidelity? Does Cole regret how he treated Zanab — and have they spoken since their clementine throwdown aired on Netflix in November? And why is Nancy hanging out with ex-fiancé Bartise, a man her own mother likened to the poop emoji?

Each of these questions is answered in the three episodes released February 10. (Though Netflix’s crew missed the Raven-SK scandal entirely, and she had to self-tape a reaction video that clumsily plays at the end of Episode 3, “A Second Shot at Love?”) This is what viewers expect out of After the Altar: We want to check in with these reality stars one year after their weddings, watch a bit of drama unfold, and then go about our day, never to think about Bartise again — until he appears on dating competition mash-up Perfect Match.

And yet, I have been plagued by Love Is Blind: After the Altar for weeks — specifically, by Colleen and Matt’s unneutered dog, Jaxon, a dachshund whose testicles prove to be the greatest obstacle to his parents’ long-term happiness.

That Jaxon is even mentioned is bizarre enough, but the way the saga is presented is straight-up nightmare fuel. When we first catch up with Colleen and Matt, they’re at the dog park, largely ignoring Jaxon (who probably shouldn’t be there, given the risk of dog pregnancy?) as they discuss the state of their marriage. Despite saying “I do” at the end of Season 3, which was filmed in Summer 2021, Colleen and Matt still haven’t moved in together one year later, preferring to explore their new relationship from the safety of their respective apartments. At the reunion, the couple presented this as an emotional and financial decision, but in After the Altar the truth comes out: It’s horny Jaxon who’s preventing them from taking that next step.

“Jaxon’s my boy, but she wants to get him neutered so bad,” Matt says in a talking head interview. Colleen agrees, explaining, “It’s too much humping for me.”

Sure, humping is to be expected with an intact dog. But it’s what comes next that’s made me feel like I’m losing my mind for the past two weeks.

“She likes to sleep naked on the bottom half,” Matt continues. “So having the dog under there, she feels uncomfortable.”

“Yeah, it’s a lot happening underneath the covers when you have, like, a little long-haired wiener dog squirming around,” adds Colleen.

Is it wrong to infer from this that unneutered Jaxon is trying to molest Colleen while she sleeps? Why does Matt not think this is a problem worth addressing?

It’s easy enough to write this off as a joke, but when it comes up again, the stress Jaxon is putting on Colleen and Matt’s relationship becomes apparent. At brunch with the other Love Is Blind women, Colleen explains that while she and Matt are in “an extremely obnoxious honeymoon phase,” she’s still not ready to move in with him. “I’m not living with him until he neuters his dog,” she says, completely serious. “Did you guys know this? He hasn’t neutered his dog, so it’s just humping everywhere.”

Colleen admits it “sounds so silly” to draw a line in the sand at Jaxon’s testicles, but the women rally to her side. “F*ck the dog,” says Alexa Lemieux, before joking that Jaxon is doing enough of that on his own. Nancy even sounds off on the situation in a talking head of her own: “I didn’t know that was a thing. A dog? I’m sorry, but that dog cannot be a priority over your wife, sir.”

Jaxon’s, erm, baggage isn’t mentioned again, but it doesn’t need to be: The gauntlet has been thrown. In the episodes that follow, Matt and Colleen’s hesitancy about living together is a main driver of the drama, and with the other storylines so neatly tied up — beyond the Raven-SK plot, Cole and Zanab have a mature conversation about their relationship and amicably go their separate ways, while Nancy declines to continue her friendship with Bartise — it remains one of the season’s only loose ends. Should Netflix decide to release an After the Altar add-on, let it be an episode about Matt taking Jaxon to get neutered, and then Colleen dumping his ass for letting that dog hump her for 18 months.

Love Is Blind: After the Altar Season 3 is now streaming on Netflix. Join the discussion about the show in our forums.

Claire Spellberg Lustig is the Senior Editor at Primetimer and a scholar of The View. Follow her on Twitter at @c_spellberg.