agonyaunt | (no subject)

(no subject)

Dear Care and Feeding,

My husband and I have been “puppy raisers” for a nearby guide dog training center for over 10 years now. Not all the dogs we raise are able to pass the qualification test to move on to the next phase of training; when that happens, they are moved into an adoption program. Dogs who have failed due to behavioral problems are available for adoption by the general public, but dogs who go on to the next phase of training but then don’t make it through health screenings later on (for anything from hip dysplasia to allergies) are made available to children with severe vision impairment as emotional and physical support companions (and are available for adoption to the public only if no such need exists).

Our last puppy, “Nala,” was a joy to be around. We all had a difficult time letting go of her, especially my 5-year-old niece, who spent lots of time with her. Often she’d visit us just so that she could see Nala. My niece is very shy and introverted and had been scared of dogs before Nala came into her life. When Nala passed the qualification test, my sister asked me to please contact them if Nala ended up being available for adoption. Last month, we were notified that Nala had been diagnosed with allergies that disqualified her from the official guide dog program, but the center already was moving to place her with a partially blind teenage boy. I was disappointed to learn that she couldn’t stay in the program but happy that she could help this boy and his family, and I thought nothing of sharing the center’s Facebook post about Nala’s adoption. But my sister felt personally insulted that I hadn’t tried to “plead [my niece’s] case” and get Nala for them.

She called me to chew me out about it. I explained the adoption process, sent her the center’s information page on it, and said that I would be more than happy to take my niece to see dogs in shelters and/or talk to the agency about failed guide dogs available for the public to adopt, but she wasn’t having it. She insisted that Nala was the only thing that had brought my niece out of her shell and that she didn’t think another dog would help. When she continued to insist that I try to intervene on behalf of my niece, benefit, I got fed up and said that I wasn’t going to entertain the idea of taking a dog away from someone who truly needed it, and if my sister couldn’t help my niece develop a healthy attachment to another dog, I wasn’t going to keep letting her family be involved with the dogs in my care. She was FURIOUS and has been doing her best to involve our parents and brother in pestering me to apologize to her and take back what I said. I’m very upset by her behavior. Would it be wrong of me to stick to my guns about this even if it damages my relationship with my sister?

—Pestered Puppy Raiser

Dear Pestered,

Look, of course you’re “right” and your sister’s “wrong.” Obviously, it would be horrible for you to advocate against placing the dog with the teenage boy in question, and it was thoughtless, at best, of your sister to ask (to expect!) you to do that. She has behaved badly. Very badly. But she has done so because she has tunnel vision where her daughter is concerned, because she saw her daughter light up with pleasure around Nala, and she can’t see past this. I think it would be generous and compassionate of you to recognize this, to understand where she’s coming from (and to tell her so). I suspect you can’t or won’t do that, and my guess is that this has nothing to do with this particular conflict and everything to do with your history with your sister, whatever that may be. This escalated too quickly to be an isolated situation.

In any case, whether you can forgive her—and whether she can forgive you for the transgression she imagines you have committed—or not, this is between the two of you. Do not punish your niece for it. Instead, encourage her to play with and come to love all the dogs that pass through your life. Help her to channel her love for Nala toward dogs overall. Talk to her about all the dogs in shelters who need love, and homes, too. Perhaps eventually she will ask her mother about adopting a rescue. Maybe her mother will say no—who knows? But don’t you do something to hurt this child out of spite. Be bigger.

https://slate.com/human-interest/2023/07/husband-postpartum-symptoms-care-and-feeding-advice.html

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It's obviously too late for my advice, but I feel like this could've been resolved pretty easily one of two ways.

Either LW could've given Sister the center's contact information and wished her luck, or, alternatively, LW could have just lied, and said "Well, I tried to talk to them about it, but they wouldn't listen! They have really strict rules, and I guess they think that if they make one exception they'll have to make more exceptions."

Of course, the latter falls apart if Sister then calls the center herself, but I feel like if she was going to do that she would've done that, so the risk is low.

With that said, now that LW has been honest about everything, I think LW needs to limit contact with all family so long as they're harassing LW about this. Because this is ridiculous. Thankfully, phones have a lovely feature where you can hang up if somebody starts talking about how bad your sister feels.

I think the first way wouldn't have worked because LW already offered to take her niece to shelters and talk to the agency about possible dogs to adopt (and Sister wouldn't have any of it). Also, the agency doesn't know Sister from Adam, so I don't see Sister ringing them to plead her case would help.

I thought Care and Feeding was needlessly stern to LW. "Be bigger"? I don't think LW is punishing her niece by standing her ground (if anything, Sister is).

I thought Care and Feeding was needlessly stern to LW.
SAME! I read the "Look of course you're 'right' and she's 'wrong'" as sarcastic/with an eye roll.

I don't think whomever wrote the advice really read the letter - there was never an option for this particular dog to go to sister/niece. If we remove morality from the equation for a moment, even if LW/niece are fine taking the dog away from someone else, it's just not an available option. This is no different from "After several visits, we fell in love with a puppy/dog at the pet store, we went in to adopt it today, and another family beat us to it." There is no "let's contact the other family to plea our case" - the dog already has a home.

Yeah, I suspect LW was already annoyed at a pattern in sister's actions and wasn't willing to bend the truth by that time because sister had already been insufferable and unreasonable, and she didn't want to give in to the unreasonable demand. Which is understandable, but just not... practical, perhaps. It is true that the situation is very simple and without wiggle room, so a rational adult should only require an explanation, so I sympathize with the feeling, but there's a child she should maintain contact with at minimum, here. Cutting off the sister over this seems suboptimal, even if the behavior is arguably that bad.

ogs who have failed due to behavioral problems are available for adoption by the general public, but dogs who go on to the next phase of training but then don’t make it through health screenings later on (for anything from hip dysplasia to allergies) are made available to children with severe vision impairment as emotional and physical support companions (and are available for adoption to the public only if no such need exists).

Barring the niece becoming vision impaired, niece never had a chance at any of the guide dogs LW was training. it's right there in black and white - sister is wrong.

If my sister couldn’t help my niece develop a healthy attachment to another dog, I wasn’t going to keep letting her family be involved with the dogs in my care.

I also don't feel this boundary is "spiteful." LW's sister made the choice to throw LW under a bus. The choice to work to explain the program to her daughter - 'These are not aunties dogs - they belong to a program. Auntie is helping to train them for children with vision impairments or blindness' was right there. Sister did not make that choice.

The natural consequence of not being willing to have an honest conversation with your child about how the world works means adults who have to bear the burden of being a "bad guy" in a situation where there aren't any bad guys to be had may not want to be around you or your child.

She called me to chew me out about it. I explained the adoption process, sent her the center’s information page on it, and said that I would be more than happy to take my niece to see dogs in shelters and/or talk to the agency about failed guide dogs available for the public to adopt, but she wasn’t having it.
This was already a reasonable solution provided to LW's sister. Sister instead decided to make the situation far more dramatic than it really needed to be. I also completely understand LW's sister's view of "my daughter used to be afraid of dogs and I am concerned that even after Nala, my daughter will continue to be afraid of dogs." I am sure there are other ways for LW's sister to navigate this situation if she genuinely wants her daughter to have an animal friendship with a dog. "I'll just take this specific dog away from a vision impaired individual" isn't an option here, though. LW's option is the most realistic one if sister is looking for a dog for niece that sister does not have to train herself.

I was going to write this comment but your version is way better.

I also don't feel this boundary is "spiteful."

That jumped out at me as well. LW needs her sister to respect the training center rules without harassing LW to ask for inappropriate exceptions. That is an eminently reasonable boundary—not spite.

In principle, I appreciate the columnist's point that LW shouldn't punish her niece for her sister's behavior. In practice, however, that's a tough line to draw: Anything involving a 5yo is going to involve their parents, or in this case, LW's sister.

I think it is disingenuous to say this is "punishing" the niece. If anything, it's punishing the sister by removing a parenting opportunity to step up to the plate and help her child navigate healthy attachments. A "punishment" the sister seemed to be wiling to take (at least in the heat of the moment) when sister had tunnel vision about this dog being the savior to her 5 year old - niece is 5, she has a long life ahead of her to form attachments/bonds to animals and find joy in dogs - it does not need to happen right this second.

On the flip side...In re-reading the letter, I couldn't help but notice there wasn't any talk about the niece's emotional state. It's all about the sister's stance on the topic. I have been running off an assumption that the 5 year old niece was devastated, but perhaps the 5 year old niece is handling this just fine fine and it's the mom who is devastated.

[Sister] insisted that Nala was the only thing that had brought my niece out of her shell and that she didn’t think another dog would help.

This in particular reads to me as "parent is distraught/worried their daughter will be forever introverted/shy and wind up being forever alone and regret it." 5 year old being introverted/shy could just be "needs coaching on how to interact with other kids" ("I like playing pretend, but my peer group plays 'wrong'" - that's when you take turns, sweetie) or could just be "her peers are overstimulating for her - she doesn't like kids" or any combination of the two.

Whether you call it punishment, removing the niece’s access to the dogs would affect the niece, presumably in a way she will find upsetting—although as you say, the letter doesn’t include much about what the niece herself wants. That may absolutely be the best call given how badly LW’s sister is behaving, but LW should make the decision with a clear-eyed understanding of how it will impact her niece.

And I’m sorry, but as a parent, I have to lol at the suggestion that I should be seeking “parenting opportunities.” Life is an unending series of such “opportunities.”

My childfree is admittedly showing here 🤣🤣🤣

"If my sister couldn’t help my niece develop a healthy attachment to another dog, I wasn’t going to keep letting her family be involved with the dogs in my care."

I also don't feel this boundary is "spiteful."

This! It's not "spiteful"--- if anything, it's protecting the niece from getting hurt by having to lose critters she's gotten attached to. Which could still be a problem that Niece would have even if her mother had given her the explanation that you very sensibly laid out and otherwise did a better job of managing her kid's expectations (rather than IMO being as much "BUT I WAAAAAANT IIIIIIIIT and YOU'RE MEEEEEEEEEEEAN!" as any child the age of her own offspring ever was), but her mother is definitely making it worse for her kid with her own behavior and expectations. LW can't control how Sister parents in general, but she can prevent Niece from getting hurt again by this specific aspect of it that has to do with LW's life in particular.

If anyone is punishing the niece here, it is her own mother who refuses to take LW's no for an answer. The dogs do not belong to LW, they belong to the organization. If that's not crystal clear to everyone in LW's family by now, then LW needs to make that clear in no uncertain terms. (For Nala, it must be explained in gentle but firm terms appropriate for her age. Kids understand more than adults think.)

LW might want to consider notifying the organization about this too, if she knows her sister's the type to cause a scene with them.

This escalated too quickly to be an isolated situation.

That may be true, but if there is one thing that can instantaneously toss the sanest people in the world into a Thunderdome style death match, it's a dispute over a pet. Pets are right up there with people's cars and insurance money for things you don't want to underestimate as potential detonation devices. I don't think the columnist understood the situation or took it as seriously as they should have.

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