Thoughts on neighbor inviting your dog into their house

In My Humble Opinion
1

First, a little background.

I’ve posted before that we aren’t on great terms with our immediate neighbors to the north. We previously had issues regarding their downspouts which were directed towards our property, and their using our side yard to access their backyard. We erected a 6’ privacy fence between our properties. Most recently, we asked them to stop leaving kitchen waste near our fence - which they were doing to attract foxes. We pretty much don’t acknowledge each other when we see each other.

They have 2 little dogs, and we have 1 - a 2 year old 40# golden doodle. We are generally very good about keeping our dog on a leash outside of our yard, but on occasion we will allow him out front with us - such as when we take the garbage cans out - largely to train him to listen to us in such situations, in case he got out, etc. He is not perfect, but he is pretty good. Once or twice he has run up to a pedestrian, but he immediately comes back when we call him. Imagine the friendliest stupid fuzzy dog, and that is him. I understand some people may still find that threatening, and I acknowledge that they should not have to experience that.

The other day, we were in the driveway, trying to figure out how we would be able to pack some bulky items in the back of our car. Our driveway is very obvious to our neighbors’ front door. In fact, it is on the side of our home closest to them. We had our dog out with us - off leash. I readily admit that we failed to pay enough attention to the dog, as we were wrestling these items in the car. At one point I heard the neighbor’s door open. I immediately called for the dog, not knowing exactly where he was, but wanting to make sure he did not go up to the neighbors - whether they had one of their dogs or not.

Apparently I was too late, as the neighbor woman was outside her door, and said something like, “Oh, Lincoln in in our house. I was worried in case he was lost.” I called him more loudly, and he came running out of the house right to us. We apologized repeatedly and profusely, and she said no apology wad needed, repeating that she was just concerned for or dog. THIS IS THE ONLY THING I’M ASKING ABOUT. I readily acknowledge that we were wrong in having the dog off leash, were not paying enough attention, and no longer do that.

Does it strike you as weird that the neighbor, with whom we are not friendly, would have brought our dog into her house, especially since the 2 of us were clearly visible maybe 30’ from her door? I’m trying to figure out any neutral or well-intentioned explanation. Because all I’m able to come up with suggests - um - cluelessness or worse.

2

Neighbor on friendly terms: this is a very neighborly thing to do.

Neighbor on unfriendly terms: they are passive aggressively saying you are a bad dog owner.

3

Yes, weird, bordering on passive aggressive behavior.

4

Hard to tell, IMHO. These neighbors don’t seem very good about respecting your boundaries, literally and figuratively. And they are possibly pretty clueless in other respects (leaving kitchen waste by the house to attract foxes? wtf? go set up a wildlife cam in the far back yard, people, and don’t bait it with rotting refuse).

So, maybe your neighbor just randomly let your dog in when she saw him at her door because, there he was. Maybe she genuinely thought at first that he might be lost. Maybe she just said that because she didn’t want you to think she was dognapping him.

Maybe she actually was trying to dognap him for some nefarious purpose. Maybe she was just trying to make you nervous about the possibility so that you’d be more careful about keeping him on-leash and away from other people’s property. (In which case, though I don’t endorse such manipulative behavior: seems to have worked?)

In this incident everybody involved seems to have been at least superficially polite and respectful (except the dog who trespassed on the neighbor’s property, who gets a pass because dog), so there’s no way to know for sure what ulterior motives there may have been. You are avoiding a possible repetition of such an incident by continuing to keep your dog off the neighbors’ property, so I would consider the incident closed.

5

I live by the maxim that it’s best to give people the benefit of the doubt about their motives. Why not? If they’re at least pretending to be polite, you can pretend they’re nice people. It’s possible they let your dog in to fuck with you, but I see no benefit in assuming that without more evidence.

6

I have zero clue about her intention, but where I live … if I see a dog off-leash and unaccompanied … I’m highly likely to try to get control of it – even putting it in my backyard – until its owner can be found.

And that’s true of the people who live nearest to me, and whose dogs I know by sight and/or name. If I see the dog but no humans … before the dog can stray far from home … I’ll probably jump in.

So she may have been doing you a solid, trying to protect your dog. She is a dog owner, after all, right ?

7

Two days ago at work there were three strays that ran by my business. I posted about the strays on Facebook and the owner eventually came and got them. Oh, by the way, I’m in a rural location…

Imgur

8

I think this is the most likely explanation, but other benign ones are certainly possible.

Your neighbor may have unintentionally done you a favor by making it clear that allowing the dog to stray near their house is unwise. Praemonitus praemunitus.

9

Same here. The first thing I do for a loose dog is try to make it safe.

For a long time, I had a cool but perfectly civil relationship with my neighbor. Then she got a dog that loves my dog and which my neighbor is completely unable to contain. Her dog gets out all the time and comes to our house looking for my dog. When she escapes, my wife or I corral the dog, which has included leashing her, trapping her in the backyard, or grabbing her and holding on until our neighbor comes. If the easiest way to contain her was to let her in the house, into the house she would go.

After rescuing my neighbor’s dog umpteen times, we’re actually on a friendly basis with her. She and her dog even come over to our house for playdates sometimes. Just appreciate that your neighbors did a nice thing and thank them sincerely.

10

Yeah, but what strikes me as odd is, I think that as soon as she opened her door, if she was able to see our dog on her front stoop, my wife and I would also have likely been in her field of vision.

We aren’t exactly small people, and we had the doors and hatch of our car open, and weren’t being especially quiet as we wrestled these bins around. Out lots are 50-60 feet wide, so we were at max 30-35’ from her door, with no obstructions between. Our houses are sorta “L-shaped”, with the garage jutting out in front of the door. As she opens her door, her garage blocks any view to the right. Looking straight ahead or slightly to the left, it would have been hard to miss seeing us. Unless she was just looking down at and focussing all of her attention on our dog.

I GUESS I might imagine inviting a loose dog into my house. Far more likely - especially if I KNEW the dog, KNEW it was friendly, and it was ACTING friendly, I’d grab the collar and look around for the owner. But - alas - not everyone always acts as Dinsdale would! :wink:

I’m content to just say, “either stupid of mean, and I’ll give her the benefit of doubt and assume stupid.” Like Kimstu said, situation closed. My wife is more of the, “What was she thinking” sort. So I was just wondering if any of you had any brilliant insights (I have darned high expectations of youse guys!). :smiley:

12

Is it possible your dog ran in, uninvited? My friendly fluffer would do that, if he smelled another dog. I am juat imagining the dog o. Her stoop, she opens the door, unaware, dog darts in. Shes nit worried, she knows dog.

13

Maybe she just likes dogs.

14

This is it exactly. The neighbor does not think that you are capable of proper attention to your dog, so they felt they needed to step in. The dog may be in danger so they took it in. You are probably at risk of being reported to the equivalent of Child Protective Services.

15

Same. If you were busy wrestling a heavy thing into your car, and it was easy for me to close the door so your dog didn’t wander off as you did it, i might well do exactly that. I’m just trying to keep control of the dog until you can take it back. No ill will on my part.

My backyard neighbor’s dog used too wander into my property, before they trained it to an invisible fence. If i noticed, i tried to catch it.

I’m friendly with my backyard neighbor, but would do the same if i weren’t. It’s not the dog’s fault.

16

I seem to have learned from some wise Doper that … you never know what people will or will not notice in their own neighborhoods :wink:

17

Except they’ve already shown themselves to be less than polite or respectful with a history (based on the interactions reported by the o.p.) of odd, inconsiderate, and possibly passive-aggressive behavior. There are people out there that will take out their aggressions upon neighbors by harassing children or injuring/abducting/poisoning pets—I’ve experience both firsthand—and it sounds as if the o.p. has reservations about their motivations for inviting his dog into their house when he was in plain view, which is a perception formed by more information that is available here. My maxim is that you should trust your instincts and if someone seems wrong about a person or their interactions you should listen to your instincts and be cautious until you have reason to believe that your perception was not correct (i.e. the person was having a bad day, or is not neurotypical, or whatever).

And that isn’t just my recommendation; in The Gift of Fear Gavin de Becker illustrates how as a society we’ve trained people to ignore their own instincts for self-preservation in order to be ‘polite’ even when they very much should be listening to their internal voice that is whispering fear. Of course, taken to an extreme this can lead to prejudice and bigotry but I think that most ordinary people who aren’t filled with anger and raised in prejudice can distinguish from uncertainty about meeting someone unfamiliar from a sense of discomfort or caution about someone displaying adverse or hostile intent. Of course, the o.p. shouldn’t be letting his dog off-leash if it isn’t well trained to stay within the yard, a point that the o.p. repeatedly acknowledges but a good neighbor in spotting that the dog is out of the yard would first try to make the owner aware rather than inviting the animal in the house without making them aware.

In fact, this whole scenario makes me cringe a bit because I have experienced the injury to a pet from an outwardly ‘polite neighbor who harbored ill intent toward my family (not toward me specifically although she was extremely spiteful and verbally abusive when I confronted her about her actions which was way out of proportion and wholly inappropriate given that I was a pre-teen and she was a grown woman who had done violence to an animal and implicitly threatened to do the same to me). I don’t know if it is even worth confronting the neighbors about this because if they did have ill intent they may just try to be more subtle about it next time; I’d just make sure the dog is not off-leash around them.

Those are some very odd looking dogs.

Stranger

18

Well she could at least have seen that our blinds were open! :smiley:

19

Sometimes discussions like this would benefit from two sides to the story. Maybe your neighbors weren’t aware how the downspouts were directed (a contractor probably installed them). Weird your neighbors where trying to attract foxes since they have 2 little dogs. Maybe they were composting. I would suggest using the experience to develop a better relationship with your neighbors. If they’re passive aggressive, you might consider moving. Most neighbors are ok once you get to know them.

20

Kindly explain the other side to me.

  • Town has a huge flooding problem, and has spent millions to correct. City code prohibits directing downspouts towards neighbors instead of front and back. When we moved in, I did not realize that. I cleared out a clog upstream, and my neighbor to the south told us about the water flooding his window wells - I immediately drove to Home Depot and got the materials to redirect it. Cost <$10 and took less than an hour including driving. IMO, that is how a neighbor acts.
    -Neighbors to the N move in. They put an extender on their downspout (not a contractor), directing the water right up to the property line, from which it flows up against my wall/foundation. We ask them to change it - all it would take is a $5 elbow directing it to the front. They refuse. We try to be reasonable and stand in the rain, watching the water flow out of their downspout across our path and up against our house, while neighbor explains that we shouldn’t believe our eyes, and the water actually flows up to the property line and then dives straight down.
    -We call the city - they say no question, neighbor has to redirect the downspout. Neighbors still refuse until the city gives them a second notice.

-Neighbor diagonally to the SE puts out what several other neighbors call the vermin smorgasbord. Has bowls of dog chow out for the fox and skunks, and heating pads and vermin huts in the winter.
We have noticed odd kitchen garbage ending up in our yard. Apples, bread rolls, etc. We suspect our dog has gotten sick from eating such stuff.
-Recently we notice neighbor to the north has started dumping kitchen scraps just on the other side of our fence - which, as you might imagine, attracts my dog’s attention (in the muddiest part of our yard.) I was in the yard, and saw the neighbor coming our with a plastic bag. I asked if she was strewing kitchen scraps. She says yes, to attract foxes, which is just what the neighbor to the SE does. I won’t relate the entire discussion but, again, this was expressly NOT done as part of composting, and was done for the purposes of attracting wildlife. Yes - both actions expressly prohibited by the city code. I wouldn’t have said anything if they had just put them on the other side of there yard - that neighbor does not have a dog.
-I really like seeing the fox. Believe me, there is no shortage of rabbits and squirrels for them to eat. Skunks - I pretty much detest. And I hate it when my dogs get skunked. So I CERTAINLY don’t try to ATTRACT them.

Believe me, we have tried to understand another “side” than ours, but can’t figure one. We’ve tried to talk about these things. They refuse reasonable appeals to neighborliness, and refuse to follow the unambiguous language of the city code. Instead, we think these folk are essentially irrational and goofy. So we put up a privacy fence, and pretty much ignore them. On the plus side, they are quiet, and their home is adequately maintained. That’s all we expect/desire of neighbors - other than that they not disturb our quiet enjoyment of our home.

Fortunately, they bought a vacation home, which they send months at a time at. Which is very nice. So no, this is NOWHERE NEAR anything that would make us consider moving. But we are beyond looking for ways to “get to know them” or “develop a better relationship with” them.

21

@Kayaker – at least – drinks.

Now, exactly how that affected the image he captured, in addition to the one that he personally saw is still something I’m wrestling with in my head.

But I’m quite sure that’s how it went down.