So, the OP claims the father is a manipulative controlling bastard, but of course you know better and he’s only merely clueless? Are you related to this man?
I don’t think her task is to enforce boundaries “while keeping the peace”. Her task is to enforce her boundaries, period. The peace would’ve been kept if dad had said at the first conversation, “Oh, that’s terrible I can’t bring my dogs! I will miss them so much, but I understand what you’re saying. I’ll see what I can do.”
In any case, I’m wanting to know which the dad is, controlling bastard or clueless dork. If clueless dork, I may still be a bit more flexible in my opinion, but not much.
I don’t see where she claimed any such thing. Maybe I missed it, in which case I’d appreciate a quote. But from everything else I’ve read, his actions seem much more consistant with clueless than controlling. Hopefully phall can illuminate the situation for us a bit more, but the picture painted of him so far tells me that he’s well-meaning but was gone fishin’ on the day that they handed out the social etiquette manual.
Of course I don’t know the guy, so I’m comparing him to people I’ve met who seem similar. I wouldn’t dream of giving any of them the royal smackdown. I’d just enforce my rules, and guide them through it as best I can. If that costs me a couple of bucks, so be it. Better to part with a small bit of cash than to alienate the clueless dorks that I care about.
He knows. Remember he said, “Oh, that’s not good,” when phal responded with silence when he told her he still had one dog. I don’t think this is a caring relationship, either. Note phal said this started with a rare conversation with her father.
So your experience is with clueless dolts. Mine is with passive aggressive to downright aggressive bullies. You think I’m hostile. I think you’re an enabling doormat.
I’m extremely generous and flexible under normal circumstances. I wouldn’t be surprised if phal is, too. But he/she made it very very clear what she could not do. Dad gets this. He already dropped off one dog. He just thinks his need to be with Chiquita overrides phal’s very legitimate reasons why he can’t be in her place. This has been explained clearly and repeatedly, and I’m not buying it that he’s just a well-meaning doofus.
Agreed with your first two statements. As to the third, I don’t think you’re hostile. But your response to me was. I was merely making an observation, and you went into attack mode. It was uncalled for. As for the last statement, no, I’m not an enabling doormat. But I do recognize some gray area between enabling and smacking down. One can be assertive without being aggressive. And sometimes that means working with people instead of working against them.
I agree that he’s being unreasonable. No one here has disagreed with that. The question is if he’s doing this because he’s being cluelessly selfish or because he’s being controlling. Your opinion obviously differs.
Do you honestly think that in his mind, he said “I’m going to manipulate my daughter to show her who’s boss”? (That’s a legitimate question, not a rhetorical one.) And make no mistake – I have no doubt that there are people like that out there, and they do indeed deserve a smackdown. If you’ve known a lot of people like that, well, then I feel bad for you. That must really suck.
But consider also that people have a huge capacity to hear only what they want to hear. “I know she said no dogs, but she couldn’t possibly have meant my little shnookum wookums! Who can say no to shnookum wookums?” Yes, there really are people out there who are that clueless, and often without malice.
I think it’s a combination of being completely clueless with a good dose of being a selfish bastard thrown in there.
This man does not pick up on ANY social clues. Sexist remarks to women? Yep, he’ll hand them out, then doesn’t understand when women give him the cold shoulder or are outright hostile. Racist remarks? He’s gotten that one a bit under control, but I think that’s as a result of fear more than social awareness. He offered to tell (14 year old) Hallboy “what women really want”–Hallboy’s response was along the lines of, “He’s nuts.” You know that uncomfortable silence when someone drops a social bomb in a social conversation? That one where everyone adverts their eyes and no one says anything because they are waiting for the person who just put his foot in his mouth to apologize? He’s the one with his foot in his mouth, chewing away, never realizing that anything is amiss. If he’s called on it, then he gets defensive (see the remark above about my landlord being an asshole–although that wasn’t a major defensive move, it was all about “blaming” someone else.)
On the other hand, he’s always done pretty much whatever he wanted to do and the women in his life (except for me, but absolutely my mother) have let him get away with it. Spend the rent money on turtles, leatherworking, a new gun? Well, okay, honey. Quit your job because you had a bad day? Gosh, what a shame. Yell at the kids and throw a plate of food across the kitchen because your steak was over cooked? Let me get a rag to clean the ketchup from the walls. (All things which have happened, by the way.)
I am probably only one of the few who has stood up to him in his life, told him no, then enforced it. Which explains why I live 1200 miles away in another part of the country and only see him every other year when HE comes to ME.
You set a boundary, it was clear and non-negotiable, and your dad chose to ignore it. It’s now time to maintain it. It’s not your fault, or the dog’s, it’s Dad’s.
Dad needs to go to a motel with darling little Chiquita. If that’s a monetary issue for him, he shouldn’t have brought the damn dog.
I feel sorry for that dog being hated by so many people because your dad hasn’t given it basic training on how not to be an annoying little crap factory.
Your dad sounds like a douche to me. He ignores all your other reasons for saying no to the dogs, then blames the landlord for being an asshole. Any one of your other reasons for saying no to the dogs was enough. You’re absolutely within your rights to tell him not to bring them into your home for whatever reason.
I wouldn’t trust him to leave the critter in the truck overnight either. Sure bet it’d be in your living room when you wake up in the morning. “It was collllld”
Is this the pit? There seems so be too much reasonable discussion going on. Here I was looking for a major meltdown from niblet_head and tdn, and they go and get all polite and all.
phall0106, can you honestly say that if you asked your landlord nicely if your dad’s crated dog could stay briefly, and you explained he situation, that he would say NO and threaten to evict you if the dog stayed? Because it sounds to me that you’re just using the landlord as the excuse and that it’s really just you who doesn’t want the dog to stay. Which is fine, but don’t put the blame on the landlord if that’s not the real issue.
I have lived in a lot of “no pets” rentals, and I don’t think I would have ever had a problem asking for a temporary exception under certain circumstances. Most landlords are just not that mean/inflexible.
It’s a good excuse. The dog will piss and shit on the floor, give the cats fleas, and might even giev the kitties some sort of disease as the dog has no shots.
Although many landlords would excuse a temp visit by a well behaved small dog, this is clearly not a well behaved animal. Carpet damage, flea infestation, and other tenants complaining? Damn right many landlords would be pissed.
So, you don’t think the OP is exaggerating in the slightest due to her dislike for the dog and for her dad’s behavior? We know for a fact that at this moment, the dog has fleas? We can be certain that the dog will shit on the carpet (how he will do this if he is in his crate the whole time is beyond me)? A small dog in a crate is without a doubt going to cause havoc and destruction?
All I am saying is that it seems the “evil landlord” story is just an excuse. If the OP doesn’t like the dog and is irritated at her dad’s presumptuousness, she should just say that instead of repeating over and over, it’s my landlord! I’m sure there is a no-dogs clause in the lease, but most landlords will make a temporary exception, especially for a small dog kept in a crate.
I tried saying that I didn’t want the dog(s) here. That didn’t work, so I moved onto the “I have two cats who do not like dogs” conversation. That didn’t work either. I then was forced to pull out the landlord/lease agreement which states NO DOGS. After pulling THAT out a few times, it seems to be the only thing that is starting to sink in.
Honestly, I don’t care if my landlord came today and said, “Gee, Phall, you’ve been such a wonderful tenant this past year, I’d love to let you have 500 dogs if you’d like!”, the dogs would STILL not be welcome. One, because of my cats (and I’m not locking them into a room for the weekend–this is their home too), and two, I hate yippy dogs, especially yippy dogs that are going to snap at me and mine (if their past behavior is any indication), and especially with an owner who is not a responsible pet owner (ie. will not housetrain his pets, and whose idea of ‘teaching them’ is to yell at them).
Another truly bizarre aspect of this is that my father works for an apartment complex (as a maintanence guy), so one would think he is familiar with leases.
This weekend, Hallboy is dog sitting for neighbors of ours. If Milton (the dog) wasn’t a huge monster, I’d drop lovely Chiquita there for the weekend. On the other hand, maybe I should introduce the two…Milton might like a snack.
