You’re right. They are more restrictive than kennels.
Only by vaccinating them. Any vet worth his salt, that is. Kennel cough is nasty stuff.
Is “My Dad is an idiot and can’t be bothered to listen” a veterinary emergency? Or are you suggesting that whatever a vet would do in an emergency he would do all the time? Tell you what. Why don’t you take your dog to the emergency vet, tell them he has no vaccinations, ask if he can spend the night, and see what happens.
For what it’s worth, my vet only has boarding facilities for clients. She absolutely will not take in a dog that has not been vaccinated, unless it is an emergency. Which this situation definitely is not.
I just called my vet to find out exactly how she would handle this. I was told that a licensed kennel is not allowed to accept any animals that do not have rabies, bordatella, etc. vaccinations. The only way she would do it is if the owner allowed her to examine the dog and give it all the required shots. So the dad would be on the hook for the cost of an exam, the vaccinations, and the boarding fees. Given what the OP has said about him, and the fact that he seriously doubts whether the dog has ever been vaccinated, putting the dog in a kennel hardly seems to be a reasonable solution.
Plus the fact that if dad seriously doesn’t have the money for a hotel for ONE night (Holiday Inn usually allows pets, and they have rooms for ~$60 / night…Comfort Inn, Days Inn…lots of chains do now, actually…) then the VET BILL for the office visit, vaccinations, tests, AND boarding fees are going to come to considerably more than the $60 or so for a single night at a hotel.
My guess is that when he show up with his little darlings, Chiquita squatted on Aunt Mary’s floor and Aunt Mary (unwise that neither are housetrained) said that she wasn’t going to take Chiquita if she wasn’t housetrained.
I’m betting that at this point, Aunt Mary has Pepper locked in the garage where she can pee and poop all over that floor.
So it can be done, just would cost $$. Never assumed it could be done for free. now the OP has a choice, find way to get $$ for the boarding, or hotel or refuse dads visit.
I’ll be damned if I’m footing one red cent towards either boarding or hotel. He was forwarned several times. He and his dog can sleep in the damned truck for all I care.
No, dad has a choice. Find a way to get $$ for boarding or hotel.
Stick to your guns phall0106. My dad used to bully me, too, until I gave him clear warnings and consequences and acted on them. I’m sorry he’s acting like a toddler, testing your boundaries. I think you are doing a good job standing up for yourself. There’s no guarantee he’ll respect you if you enforce your rules, but it’s guaranteed he won’t if you back down.
He has plenty of choices. Shoot the dog. Shoot his dad. Move. Sell the dog to gypsies. They all suffer from the same flaw as your suggestion. They are impractical.
What part of “A kennel is out of the question” do you not get? He has considered his choices, and springing for a kennel isn’t one of them.
I really don’t believe that many people set out to be asses. Brain farts, bad days and just obliviousness usually explain most maddening actions. I’m not Christian but that old casting-stones thing still rings true in adulthood. Gotta cut other people slack in order to want/accept it.
This situation really doesn’t require all the bile and panic. The OP has a perfectly reasonable, ironclad basis for not allowing the dog. It’s quite clear he doesn’t like the pup, and it hasn’t been properly trained or socialized but what’s so hard to understand about an old man doting on the companionship of a loving, uncritical pet? Not a great pet owner but c’mon, he’s not a monster either.
Google “pet friendly motels”. There are plenty of options for places that accept pets. Small dogs are particularly easy; a chihuahua falls well within the size limits for pet friendly places.
No, no and no. Why should the OP split anything. Dad wants what he wants, he’s made that clear. This is not an arguement over the logistics of having a dog with him. This is an arguement over dad knowing the restrictions and expecting them to be bent regardless of the effects on the OP. The OP is not the one being unreasonable.
Whoa, this gets my hackles up. Yeah, it’s a button of mine from years of being shat on by my father and being told that I had to be the “bigger man” to keep the peace. And you know what? Dad kept pulling his shit because he could get away with it! I’m telling you, he doesn’t pull that crap on me anymore because he knows I will enforce my boundaries.
And you better believe some people set out to be asses. The OPs dad may be more clueless than malicious, but that doesn’t mean he is incapable of learning.
:smack: I called my dad–again reiterated that the dog could not be here under any circumstances. Again stated that it was a voilation of my lease, and that my landlord could very well use that as an excuse to make me move.
“He’s that much of an asshole?” my father replied. :smack:
“Yep,” I said. “So you need to come up with Plan B.”
I offered to give him the name of a few hotels in the area where he could stay with his dog. He said that he’d ask the cousin if she could keep the dog while he was in Pennsylvania.
A chihuahua named Chiquita is suspicious from the outset. My aunt has a chihuahua and named it Binky and it was a neurotic, possessive, spoiled little beast. It terrorized the entire family. We were all glad when it died… but then she got another one named Chicky, and it was no different.
I boarded my dog four weeks after he was inoculated for kennel cough. He got so sick with kennel cough a week after his stay that we almost lost him. Our vet told us they shouldn’t have taken him, as it takes six weeks for the vaccine to take full effect. The kennel shouldn’t be an option.
In other words, what? He thought you were… imagining things? Hysterical? Lying? Too stupid to understand that when your landlord says no he doesn’t really mean no?
Nice that he didn’t believe you. What a patronizing thing to say.
I know what you mean about bad family dynamics leaving bruises, niblet_head. Decades haven’t erased some of my instinctive hackle-raising either. In my case it was a control-freak-on-crack asshole of a mother. Likely I overcompensate because I know some of my first reactions aren’t really in proportion to what happens now. At any rate, I still don’t know if mother was sick or just one of those relatively rare people who enjoyed bullying for its own sake. IME, however, some people do set out to be asses; just not most of them. I don’t know where phal’s father sits on that.
I’m not dissing phal. He’s caught in a mess, through absolutely no will of his own–and that sucks, big time. But the situation exists so might as well go for the simplest solution. I don’t care who pays for the motel room. Splitting the cost with the old man might convey ‘glad to see you’ but making him pay the other half would be a consequence for his failure to listen, passive aggression, whatever. But he’d also be justified in making his dad pay for the whole thing. Given his dad’s selective amnesia about the lease, cats, etc. it has to be tempting as hell. Old man, making a long drive…toss up, IMO. Whatever works best, and by “works” I mean gets the OP through the next few days with the minimum heartburn.
I hear you, I just don’t think that splitting costs in necessarily the simplest solution. Simplest for the moment? Perhaps. But maybe worse in the long-run. And simplest for whom?
I guess the question really is for the OP, of course. If this is an incident, paying for a hotel room may be the way to go. If this is a trend, then absolutely not.
Does your dad sell vacuum cleaners door-to-door?
Do any telemarketing?
Sell any timeshares on the side?
Cause he sounds like he has no concept of the word “NO”.
You need to stand firm and not budge an inch. You give an inch to these people and they think they can take a mile.
Say no enough times and they’ll eventually give up and find another target to prey upon.
It really depends on the temperament of the father. If he is a manipulative, controlling bastard, as you claim your father to be, then yeah, teach him a lesson. If he’s merely clueless (which it sounds like to me), then there’s not much of anything to teach. Your task here is to enforce your own boundaries while keeping the peace. Sometimes that will cost you a few bucks.