They say that before any couple gets married they should share a dog together. The purpose of this is to make sure that you are not making the wrong choice in making your romantic partner your spouse and to mutually share a responsibility together. The consensus is, if you can't handle the dog, the relationship is doomed. With pets becoming members of the family, it is only natural that they become players in the dynamics of the relationship.

But what do you do if your loving pet comes between you and your partner? Dogs particularly are noted for their loyalty and they choose an alpha personality in the home to bond with. There can only ever be one alpha, so this generally leaves someone left out of the primary connection with the animal. When this happens, the natural consequence is hurt, resentment and arguments. When you are quarreling about the dog, is it really about the dog?

Avoid getting embroiled with such issues sometime in the future by a test run with a pretend animal, and see if there are conflict issues between your co-owning a virtual animal. The hottest thing on the Internet today is the kingdom of neopets, the actual kingdom called Neopia. This is a home for virtual pets where owners can choose from 46 different species to adopt. You can choose as many as 4 out of the 46 species. NeoPoints are then earned by playing games, investing in the pet stock market, trading, and winning contests. You will earn NeoPoints that act as NeoPet currency that will help you to see to it that your pet is in the pink of health and can use the points to play games and buy items for your neopets.

NeoPets is becoming such a hot thing today, that Neopets merchandising is exploding into real life merchandise as well. Limited Too and Claire's Boutiques offering themselves as jewelry stores for neopets merchandise.

Wandering around jewelry stores looking for the perfect gift for your expected betrothed should be held off until you have indulged in the Neopets experience together. By doing so, you get an idea of how to take care of another creature, and it is an experience and process you both can undergo together as your first real relationship test.

And now with all of the Neopet merchandise exploding on the market, you can test out her jewelry preferences by helping her pick out blings for her Neopets at any of the jewelry stores that offer the Neopet merchandise. NeoPet jewelry stores can not only act as a means to establish relationship connections to increase the chances of smooth sailing after marriage, but can provide you with valuable information for what she wants when the NeoPet experiment works, and you can purchase from a jewelry store a gift that tells her of your love.