LeAnn Rimes: Love me, love my dogs! (15 photos)

As a young female country-pop crossover recording artist, LeAnn Rimes has the obligatory Cute Little Pop Star Dog.

In fact, the 25-year-old Rimes has six Cute Little Pop Star Dogs.

Most are daschunds.

At least one is a pomeranian.

However, Rimes doesn't tour with her Cute Little Pop Star Dogs.

She brings just one animal when she travels.

It's a snarly and fearsome German Shepherd intended to discourage the Creepy Middle-Aged Dudes who show up at most every LeAnn Rimes concert, bellowing their undying, ethanol-fueled love into the proscenium.

Please do not ask how SooToday.com's creepy, middle-aged male reporter found out about LeAnn's snarly shepherd during her performance this weekend at Kewadin Casino's Dream Makers Theatre.

Let's just change the subject, okay?

To be a true pop star, it's also necessary to have a Cute Little Pop Star Husband.

For Ms. Rimes, that would be Dean Sheremet, a backup dancer from Detroit who was hired to perform with her at the 2001 Academy of Country Music Awards and ended up marrying her the following year.

LeAnn and Dean live in 40-million-album splendor in Nashville, where the summer weather sucks.

She loves getting to Michigan this time of year to cool off, although Dean cautions that she wouldn't enjoy cooling off in the Wolverine State six months from now.

With six years of marriage tucked under her chiffon beltline, Ms. Rimes was generously dispensing relationship advice to the Kewadin crowd.

Here, she told us, is the secret to managing those Cute Little Pop Star Husbands:

"Sometimes a woman has to take the upper hand in a relationship," she said.

"It works. And you guys know you like it."

At this point, all the Creepy Middle-Aged Dudes started cheering uproariously.

We suspect that LeAnn could have crushed their ganglions with a 20-pound sledge hammer and they would still have liked it.

Just so long as it was her taking the upper hand.

The loudest cheers of the night came a little later - again from the Creepy Middle-Aged Dudes - as LeAnn settled down on a bar stool in a short dress and crossed her legs.

This was just before she sang What I Cannot Change, a subdued, pretty number that will be released as a single in the weeks to come.

Click on the photo gallery below to see more SooToday.com photos from LeAnn's Kewadin concert.