Say you have a family with widely scattered adult children, all or most of whom traditionally get together for a week or two at mom and dad’s house for Christmas.
One of the children is highly allergic to animals, particularly dogs. This is a lifelong allergy, severe enough in childhood to have required multiple hospitalizations, but in adulthood just resulting in a lot of sneezing, asthma, sore throat, raw nose, drowsiness, and general sickness.
The other adult children all have dogs which, like all dog-owners, they love, and consider parts of their families. When they are at the parents’ house they make a good faith effort to keep the dogs away from the allergic sibling, but such is the nature of things that this is only partly successful and with all the dander in the air the sibling gets sick anyway.
So who/what has priority in this kind of situation? Assuming everyone wants to keep getting together once a year, should the allergic sibling grin and bear it for the sake of everyone else getting to have their dogs with them? Or is it incumbent on the dog-owners to leave their dogs in kennels or stay in a nearby pet-friendly hotel so that the one sibling won’t get ill?
I can only speak as the allergic sibling (to cats, not dogs), but no one in my family would consider bringing an animal to which I was allergic to a family gathering. These people get to spend the entire year with their pets – they should be able to be without them for a short period of time so that their sibling can join in the celebration. If I knew for certain that cats would be at the event and not kept under control, I would have to send my regrets.
I’d think that siblings who grew up with someone who had to be repeatedly hospitalized for the allergy would be more sensitive to his or her situation.
I have a big dog, to whom I am irrationally attached. The whole “she is my baby” deal.
However, I have young, tiny relatives and old, frail relatives. While I would love more than anything for my sweet baby girl to be with me at every family gathering - especially Christmas - she just isn’t a good fit.
Lucky for me, she just has to stay at home and not in a kennel. I can run home to feed her during the day and come home to her at night.
If a kennel were involved, it’d be a much harder decision.
Can’t the venue be changed to a non-dog venue (no lingering dander) and the dogs left comfortably at their homes?
If the sibling is that bad, the rest of the family needs to leave the pets at home. The only way I would suggest bring the pets with is if coming to the gathering means leaving the pet alone for more then a full day. My mom is allergic to dogs, I wouldn’t think of bringing mine, but my brother brings his because he has to come in from out of town. Even then, he leaves the dog at his in-law’s house (a few blocks away from my parents) as much as he can. Luckily, it just means my mom sneezes throughout the day.
I can tell you my mom just plain wouldn’t allow cats in the house. She can’t spend more then an hour or two in houses that have cats.
That was something I was thinking. Get her some Claritin for the day or two before the party and the day of AND maybe talk to your doctor about getting her some Singular as well (you can take both of them). I’m assuming she has an Albuteral or Advair inhaler. Benadryl will probably help clear her up at night.
On the one hand she shouldn’t have to suffer because everyone else wants to bring their dogs. OTOH, why should everyone else have to leave their dogs at home because one person has allergies. If she can load up on meds and tough it out for a few hours, I’d try that. If the family likes having all the dogs around, you wouldn’t want them to resent her because of it. Sucks, but that might be the way it is.
I would try loading up on meds and see what happens. The next step (but it’s a big step) would be to go to an allergist and get allergy shots for it. But that’s a lot of work and pretty expensive just to be around dogs a few times a year.
I’m dog owner and dog lover, but I’d leave him at home or with a friend if I had a highly allergic sibling.
But I didn’t vote for “humans are more important than pets” because that’s not my reasoning. The reasoning is that it’s a small concession for a large payoff.
If it were just a family dinner, for a few hours, then I suppose it might be possible to sequester the dogs, but for a multi-day visit, they need to go to the kennel. It’s not going to hurt them, and it will make the visit all the more enjoyable for the rest of the family.
We own two dogs, who are definitely ‘part of the family’. They have the run of the house, sleep on the bed, etc. But I’d never even think of subjecting an allergic relative to a week’s worth of suffering on their behalf.
I don’t think it’ll matter much if the dog is physically there or not. We’ve done a lot of house hunting recently, and most people take their pets out of the home during Open Houses and scheduled tours. Most people also clean and vacuum up, as you can imagine. For my husband, who is highly allergic, it doesn’t matter. The second he walks into a home that houses a pet, he starts reacting. Sometimes it gets so bad, he has to use an inhaler. The dander is there, and normal cleaning isn’t going to make up for it.
So, while it’d be awesome if the dog could be removed from the home, unless the host is willing to have the house professionally cleaned, including moving furniture and steam cleaning carpets, I’m not sure it’s going to make much difference.
I wouldn’t put my dog in a kennel for any amount of time. He’s a stray and I got him from a kennel and I’m not going to leave him at one when he won’t understand that I’m coming back. Plus, kennel cough and other nastiness. Plus, I couldn’t possibly afford it, especially for a whole week.
I would probably refrain from visiting while allergic sibling was present and come around a week later or so when it was convenient for us. I’d probably skip the big gatherings, or go see the dog lovers when Allergica is absent. If she came around when the dogs were there, I’d contribute to putting her up in a hotel so she’d have somewhere to retreat if it got bad.
I wouldn’t stop her from seeing the folks at Christmas - I’d rearrange my schedule. If she wanted to come to my town, I’d take her to dinner outside my house. But presumably, we’re all far-flung for a reason, you know.
I am highly allergic to cats. Most of our family functions are at my brothers’ house, because he has five boys and it’s just easier for the rest of us to come to them. They also have three cats. I take antihistamines while I’m there, and keep an inhaler in my pocket. I survive.
I would not expect him to pack up the cats and bring them to my fathers’ house if we were meeting there. That would just be astoundingly inappropriate.
I’m definitely old-school on this one: pets are pets - beloved by the family, but not members of it, and their needs subordinate to those of the family if push should come to shove. So I would assume that the dogs would be excluded unless and until a pharmaceutical solution for the afflicted family member’s allergies was found to be reliable.
I have a dog and love my pets. They’d stay home. You describe her symptoms as having become more mild as an adult, but include asthma as a symptom. Asthma is serious business and I’d never put someone else at risk like that just to keep my pet with me. I’d never make a family member feel that much less important than a dog. Frankly, as the parent, I’d insist the dogs not come.
The other family members are bringing the pets to those host’s house. No one is suggesting the homeowners pack up their pets.
Geez, this. If the allergic sibling is doing everything possible with his/her allergist to minimize symptoms and still feels that shitty, then I totally agree, it’s kind of mean to put that person through that level of misery. And I say this as someone who developed a milder dog allergy as a child and had to spend a lot of my childhood on antihistamines because I loved the family dog.
How does the person with the allergies feel about the pets being there? Has anyone bothered to ask?
I love dogs (have two) but I would never make a family member with allergies suffer because I insist on bringing my dogs.
Just the idea of considering the feelings of a pet over those of a (presumably) loved family member is insulting.
OTOH (just to play devil’s advocate for a moment), if the allergic sibling is doing nothing, I’m not sure it’s fair to tell several people to leave their dogs at home just so that one person doesn’t have their allergies flare up for half a day. That’s why I suggested they try the allergy meds route one time. Claritin (and Singulair the day before and day of), keep an inhaler nearby and take Benadryl that night of needed. She might find that with those meds she has almost no or very few issues at all. If that doesn’t work or it’s something she’s already tried that’s different, but I think it’s worth a shot.
Don’t tell me no one’s ever taken a couple of antacids before going to a restaurant that they know will cause heartburn or a few tylenol before they go out drinking. It’s not unheard of to make a few small adjustments to your life to make others happier. I know I’ve done both of those so that I didn’t have to say “Can we not drink/get Italian tonight?”.
Also, just to reiterate what I said earlier so I don’t sound like a jerk, I’d still suggest leaving the dogs at home unless they’re coming from out of town. I’m just saying they’re might be ways to help her deal with the allergies.
I am an allergy sufferer. Cats and dogs can affect me anywhere from sniffles to full blown asthma attack and I am never, really sure how bad it will be. My parents live across the country from me and if they visit me they leave the dogs behind. After I ended up in the hospital with a severe asthma attack while visiting once they now will pay to put me up in a hotel if they want me to visit them. My in-laws have a rotweiller which, for some reason, doesn’t send me running to the hospital, but I do need my inhaler once or twice a day and spend a lot of time feeling stuffy with itchy eyes and that scratchy gonna sneeze back of the throat feeling that never actually results in a sneeze. Not too bad in the summer when I can go outside to get away but in the winter it really sucks. Needless to say I never spend more time than necessary at the in-laws.
If a family gathering is important to you and you want to spend time with this person, do what you can to keep the animals away. The allergy sufferer goes though enough crap without having to needlessly suffer their symptoms (the shittiest I’ve ever felt was when my little girl told me her Christmas wish is that I not be allergic anymore so she can have a kitty.)
I love my dogs dearly, but they don’t come on vacation with me. They especially don’t come on vacation with me if I’m visiting people who are allergic to dogs. I think part of responsible pet-ownership is having a plan for when you have to go out of town. For us, that’s no fewer than 3 people we can call on to either take our dogs to their home for when we’re gone, or stay at our house and care for them. Other people rely on kennels.
In other words, I would never, ever, ever show up at a place where people are allergic with my dog. I don’t care how much you love your dog, it’s just rude.
If the allergic sibling is doing nothing, I agree with you, but given the history and severity of the problem, I think that’s unlikely. In my case, I take allergy medication every single day, and I would still have problems being in a home with a cat for more than a few hours.
I also agree that there’s a difference between asking people not to bring pets (reasonable), and asking people to remove pets from their home (less reasonable). Of course this means that there are situations where certain family members may not be able to host the holidays if there is an allergic relative. It’s always up to the host to determine whether pets are allowed, but in the case of parents, I think the best choice is always to invite the children, and if necessary indicate that pets are not welcome. I would interpret inviting pets and allowing one child to suffer (or to have to decline the invitation) not as choosing one child over another, but as choosing one child’s pet over another child, which would give me a very poor opinion of the parents.