to be annoyed about this situation with neighbour and her dog?

She could have answered the phone or replied to messages, even if grief stricken. It is HER dog - @CantGetBackToSleepis not contacting her for random chit chat.

@HarshbutTrue2 and @maxslice

Genuine ask...do you think the OP should have cancelled her holiday to look after the dog?

She could live just over the Border for all you know.
Scotland is not a long way from everywhere, just from where you imagine she lives. It's often much much cheaper to get a plane to go anywhere in England and Wales
(I don't know about NI or Ireland) than get the train. The journey is over in one and, obviously, much quicker, and the woman wanted to see her mother as quickly
as it could be done. My sister has been flying down to the South West to see our parents for years because she couldn't afford the train fares, and I've been amazed at the number of people coming off the plane with just their laptop and a coat, clearly going to a meeting or whatever and then going home again.
It's a stupid opening gambit for you to make. And the fact that you view Scotland as the Faraway Land makes you look silly and weakens all your further (preposterous) arguments.

She hasn’t been blocked from finding out - @CantGetBackToSleep after many contact attempts has informed her where the dog is and how to retrieve. Not to mention a shitty text from the neighbours relative when enquiring what to do with the dog, bearing in mind OP was more than clear about what timescale she could offer help within.

what do you expect the OP to do? Cancel her holiday? Pay for a kennel? Why couldn’t the owner take OP up on the kind offer of a sourced kennel place and pay for her own animal to be cared for?

OP did a good thing, and has been taken advantage of.

As pointed out, you can’t just do this. Kennels won’t take a dog without vaccination certificates and (even if they would) what is it, £30-50 a day, which Op will never get back anyway.

you would not fail to make provision for a child in these circumstances, how is a family dog really any different?! Both are entirely reliant on their owners. Even if the bereaved neighbour is heartbroken and unable to function, the person sending the text should have stepped in or found someone who could.

*owners/parents (of course)

She said that the vet had planned to scan the dog to identify but that a receptionist recognised it meaning they hadn’t had to - so this does suggest she didn’t disclose who the owner was herself but in the circumstances I think it was probably wise. She needed to leave swiftly minus the dog and knew the vets had all the means to identify the dog and have access to the details to try to contact the owner.

re the pts being a fantasy. Maybe that does happen with a stray dog especially if it’s poorly but in this case they know who the owner is and the dogs vet history which presumably shows it’s (normally) a well cared for and healthy dog so highly unlikely they will pts after 7 days in this case

Thank you for your kind words.
The OP lives in the South of England. Therefore, we assume her neighbour lives in the south of England. She had to help organise the flight for the neighbour. This means she went on a plane.

This would include all the faff at the airport. She may have a long drive at the other end. We don't know. For example, 2 hour wait at Gatwick, an hour's flight to Glasgow, hire a car 150 mile to Fort William. Its a haul.

I have flown to Scotland regularly. I have driven the length and breadth of Scotland on several occasions. I have also flown to Ireland for funerals at short notice. I have several short notice back ups for my dog.

You may think I live in fantasy land or I am preposterous. However, my comprehension skills are far superior to yours. I am capable of reading and understanding a post on mumnet.I suspect that I am more well travelled than you too.

I really feel for you because apart from this awful situation whatever you do your neighbour has upset your life. It’s hard to be a caring person and to enjoy your much look forward to holiday. Your neighbour is obviously a coward and a narcissist despite her very sad loss she is disgusting to dump this responsibility on you. And. When she gets back there will be more upset and you’ll have to live Nextdoor. So it’s a much bigger upset and I’d be furious. I’d ring her phone every five minutes for a couple of hours and tell her to send payment details, get someone to ring you back or you’ll have to give dog away. You’ve paid for your flights and holiday. I’d even mention small claim court. This family are nasty. Has she no family near you. Look online has she Facebook find a local friend and take the dog there. Good luck. Are you on Nextdoor app. Someone may take the dog. Please update us when you get back from your holiday and have a good one, make sure that you don’t give her a second thought.

RSPCA and say the dog is abandoned. She’ll get it back I should think under the circumstances . Life goes on, I found a parent unexpectedly dead. I bumped into an old acquaintance minutes later and slapped a smile on my face and made pleasantries, I went home and parented my children because I have responsibilities and so does she! You can be sad for her and also need to go on holiday. You’ve done your bit, it was already a considerable ask.

OP had organised kennels for her. All the owner had to do was answer the phone and provide payment - or get a family member to do so. She is deliberately ignoring those calls

No.
I have already stated that she should have contacted an animal charity for help. If they can't help, they will usually tell you who can.

I think our local stray dogs go to the dogs trust. Other councils have dogs homes. This is the sort of place where the dog will end up. Obviously, dogs trust must keep empty kennels especially for the council.

I think the owner has 7 days in which to claim, then the dog is put up for rehoming. Council pounds often pts. I know it costs a lot of money to reclaim a dog, not sure, but maybe £200.

Read the full thread. Or at least OP updates. She is now on holiday

I think that you are rather overwrought and, for some reason, taking this very personally, to make this ridiculous statement:

'Many posters are heartless and cruel. If it was a child they probably would have dumped it in a field or the local hospital.'

OP's neighbour losing her mother is no excuse for her abandoning her dog. She knew from the beginning when she left her dog with OP that OP was going on holiday. The neighbour's relative who contacted OP to tell her that her neighbour's mum had died, who clearly wasn't as grief stricken as OP's neighbour, could have responded to OP's many messages asking what she should do with the dog when she goes on holiday.

The dog is with the vet that has treated the dog previously. Your hyperbolic hand-wringing would be reasonable if OP had just opened her front door and released the dog into the wild to fend for itself. She obviously didn't do that and has gone to a lot of trouble to leave the dog somewhere safe.

Why don't you DM the OP and get details of the kennel and the vet. You can organise it and pay for it? Go on, be kind.

If OP has no empathy, why on earth would she have agreed to look after the dog in the first place? She could have just said no and the owner would have needed to make other arrangements. She certainly wouldn't have been able to catch the flight that OP helped her book because her neighbour was too upset. OP also made it very clear that she could only look after the dog for a few days as she was going on holiday.

It doesn't matter whether the OP told the vet's receptionist who the dog belonged to. They can't take her word for it. They need to scan for a chip. The receptionist thinking she recognised the dog wouldn't mean they didn't have to scan either. They would have to try to make sure.

As for dogs being pts, councils have a legal obligation to hold a dog for 7 days. I'm hoping and thinking that this dog won't end up in a council pound and the owner will return home or at least make contact with the vet and all will be well. But if it does end up in a council pound it will make no difference that the dog is "(normally) a well cared for and healthy dog" who is registered with a vet. It will be deemed an abandoned dog and if it serves its 7 days and more dogs need to come into council kennels, then it may well be pts. As I said, I don't think this dog will end up in council kennels, but we need to be honest about the fate of many dogs in this country: too many dogs, too few people to take care of them and not enough spaces for them.

@HarshbutTrue2 if your comprehension skills were up to scratch as you claim up thread, you would have been aware that OP had made significant efforts to a) help her neighbour and b) provide suggestions for onward arrangements inc kennelling after her stated timeframe for assistance had run out.

It is just plain irresponsible and rude to expect her to deal with dog charities, vets, kennels when she has her own commitments and has already gone out of her way to assist.

I m Scottish, I often travel there from my home in SE England to visit an elderly parent with significant health issues, I own 3 dogs and manage not to inconvenience people or cause them distress right before they are due to go on holiday, as a result of ditching my pet owning responsibilities.

Scotland is not on a different continent, nor is it necessary to stay the entire time there until a funeral. Once initial paperwork is collected - a couple of days at most - it is perfectly possible to come home and look after your pet, and until such times as you travel back up for the actual funeral, having used mod cons like email and phones to make all other arrangements.

Its obvious that other family are there with the neighbour, because one of them deemed it appropriate to admonish the OP for asking a very reasonable question about the animal she does not own and is helping out of kindness.

I’ll say it louder for the hard of thinking the OP did a kind thing and has been taken advantage of.

How is it a shock? OP told her what she would do if the owner did not sort something else out.

There is nothing in GDPR preventing the vet from either using information provided by OP or their own records to contact the owner.

There really are some holier than thou types on here this morning.

OP should have cancelled her holiday to look after the dog, and also cleaned the neighbour's house, filled her fridge and freezer with home cooked food and tidied her garden.

Is that better?

Why don’t you pay? Easy to be kind with someone else’s money and resources.

this woman had another relative responding to the OP, that relative could have taken care of the payment given that the OP actually organised kennels for them. But no, they all can’t be bothered about the dog.

what if the neighbour had children, would have been too distraught to care about them too? You don’t just abandon your key responsibility to someone who is fully dependent on you, whether it’s your pet or your child. She is not fit to be a dog owner if she abandons them like that.

My mum died, I was pregnant suffering with HG with 5 children at home… I still had to get up and care of them. Take them to school the next day. Cook dinner etc etc. your neighbour is grieving but she’s also taking the piss. She’s a grown adult and it doesn’t take much to just reply. You helped her when she really needed you to, you could have just said no to her about the dog straight away but you didn’t. I don’t know how close you are to your neighbours but it kinda sounds like it’s a neighbour and not a friend because I think if it was a friend you would just pay for the kennels and know she’d pay you back. But if it’s just the person who lives next door to you and you aren’t actually friends then you have already done more than expect and you have every right to safely hand over the dog to someone else and go on holiday. Unfortunately I don’t think your neighbour sounds like the kind of person who will think that is readable though and will probably cause awkwardness.

Poor little dog. I hope it remains somewhere safe until the neighbour comes back/to her senses. I understand that it’s not the OP’s fault, but I just feel so sorry for the dog. My dog was a huge source of comfort when my parents died. He knew I was upset and always had his head on my knee.

What is your problem with OP leaving the dog at the vets? The neighbour knows where the dog is, the vet is not going to do anything without contacting the owner first. All OP has done is put the responsibility back on her neighbour, which is exactly what would have happened if she had followed any of your suggestions.