NYT Social Q's: My Friend Offered to Dogsit, Then Backed Out When Her Mother Died. Now What?

[minoanmiss]

A reader is left wondering how to patch things up with irked neighbors after an understandably preoccupied friend left the reader’s dog alone to bark all night.

By Philip Galanes
Jan. 3, 2024
I visited my family overseas for three weeks. It was our first Christmas together in 10 years. A close friend offered to take my dog while I was away. During the first week, my friend’s mother died. I offered to make other arrangements for my dog, but she said it wasn’t necessary. By the second week, she was struggling. She asked if she could return the dog to my house and visit twice a day. I asked another person to help her so my dog would get more visits and my friend could deal with her loss. Then, my neighbors complained that my dog was barking all night. I asked my close friend to spend one night at my house. She declined and insinuated that I was to blame for the situation. Her inability to commit has caused a rift with my neighbors. How can I remedy the problem with the neighbors? (I’m OK just moving on with my friend and not accepting offers of help from her again.)




I sympathize with the inconvenience of having to make new dogsitting arrangements and fielding complaints from neighbors while you were abroad. But I am surprised by your lack of perspective and passive-aggressive swipes at your close friend: The death of her mother is of a different order of magnitude than your workaday complaints, including her silly insinuation that you were to blame for the barking. (Grief can prompt us to say and do odd things.)

Now, I don’t belittle your feelings. Sometimes, it takes an outsider to help us see that our interpretation of events is too narrow. Let me be that outsider here: Your friend probably believed that she could handle the responsibility — and wanted to, for your sake — until grief overwhelmed her and she couldn’t. If she were simply a flake, you wouldn’t have left your dog in her care, right?

It doesn’t sound to me as if anyone did anything wrong here. It was a symphony of bad timing. Try to be compassionate to your friend. She is grieving. And apologize to your neighbors with a brief explanation of the circumstances. I’m sorry for the stress to you and to them, but I’m even sorrier for your friend’s loss over the holidays.

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Comments

That Bad Advice

[minoanmiss]

Dear LW,

I don't know why you wrote in, when you already know the answer! Look at the last line of your letter: (I’m OK just moving on with my friend and not accepting offers of help from her again.) There you go! She's amply proven her utter unreliability by letting a trivial setback like her mother's death interfere with caring for your precious pooch. In fact, just stop talking to her. She's not in your league, you paragon.

Speaking of which, there is no way you can explain to your neighbors that a pileup of unavoidable circumstances resulted in the dog being left alone to bark all night, one night. Such an admission might falsely portray you as fallible and human rather than the utter paragon you are. I'm afraid you're just going to have to kill them all.

Re: That Bad Advice

[ioplokon]

I mean genuinely if the neighbors are this mad about 1 night of dog noises, I feel like there's no hope. Idk maybe I've just always had shitty neighbors ^^;

Re: That Bad Advice

[movingfinger]

Nothing says that the dog barked for one night. I live on a street with a dog like this and he will bark all night off and on. All. Night. When his owner is not home. Which is often.

The LW, if in a condo or apartment, is in a very bad place with the neighbors. I would advise telling the entire truth about what happened, apologizing sincerely with restaurant gift certificates and a handwritten note, and promising and ensuring that the dog does not ever bark all night again. Even if it means no more three-week vacations, LW cannot do this again. It could be some kind of training would help, but that is for the LW to work on; it's not a guaranteed solution.

It's very sad that LW's friend's mother died, but the problem LW is trying to manage here is, they have horribly imposed on every one of their neighbors. The columnist does not seem to appreciate that.

Re: That Bad Advice

[syderia]

The thing is, the letter writer doesn't explain why they didn't try to find another solution than leaving the dog in their (for the sake of argument) appartment.
Have they no other friends? Couldn't they find a boarding kennel? Or find a dog walker or a dog sitter?
Maybe none of these solutions would have worked for very good reasons, but since the LW doesn't explain why their only solution was to impose on a friend who had lost their mother, I find myself bereft of sympathy for them.
(I do have a lot of sympathy for the neighbors, and for the friend).

Re: That Bad Advice

[laurajv]

the LW absolutely does explain this? At first they asked if they should make other arrangements, and their friend said no. THEN the friend asked to change the arrangement, and LW found them a helper (which at that point, during the holidays, and from abroad, might have been all that was possible to find, especially last minute.)

Re: That Bad Advice

[ioplokon]

Ah, I read it as they were able to get people to help for the other nights & then the comment I replied to reinforced that.

Honestly, I'm in a similar situation to you, where the neighbors' dogs bark all night all the time for no real reason, so I was surprised that it would be some irreparable rift if it happened once. Maybe my standards are too low 😅

Re: That Bad Advice

[movingfinger]

The helper and friend weren’t spending nights with the dog, and the dog was stressed and lonely and barked incessantly.

Re: That Bad Advice

[minoanmiss]

Oh you're right. I mistook what the "just one night" was describing.

Re: That Bad Advice

[firecat]

I wonder if it was the noise per se that the neighbors objected to. I used to live next door to a family who sometimes left their dog in the yard all night when they went out and it always barked the whole time they were away. I didn’t mind the barking so much; I volunteered at an animal shelter and my brain learned to tune out barking. But I did feel bad for the dog.

[ethelmay]

Oh, wow. I was actually house-sitting when my mother died (many years ago). The woman I was working for had a backup person in place (not because of my mother, just on general principles). I called the backup person and turned things over to him. There was some small amount of scrambling, but everything worked out, and I have been deeply thankful for that backup plan ever since.