About 8 months ago I got a puppy following the death of my beloved old dog. Obviously not had a puppy for a while, so found training hard but we were going to classes and not doing too badly.
Over the road lives a, well, kind but perhaps overly interested in the neighbours type of person. I have lived her for just over a year, and she made herself known from the start, knocking on the door and introducing herself etc. This was nice, but a few times she and her husband seemed to be a little bit over-invested in my life, commenting on the dc and jobs they could see needed doing from looking at the front of my house, which I was obviously aware of. When ds2 broke his leg, she was over within minutes of seeing me get him out of the car with a cast on offering lifts to school - which was obviously very kind, but a bit odd that she had clocked the situation so quickly. She has often as good as told me she feels sorry for me being a single mother - I am currently divorcing.
Anyway, when I got the puppy she started offering to walk with me with her dog, and gave me a lot of tips, some of which contradicted the advice I was given at training, but I was grateful for her help and company.
Three weeks ago, I was out walking my puppy alone and he bolted underneath a hedge onto a road and was run over and killed. Obviously I am extremely sad about this and regret letting him off the lead that day. But his recall was pretty good and the field in question looks to be pretty secure and is always full of dogs off the lead. He crawled under the hedge and it hadn't looked like an obvious risk. Clearly I am paying the price now for what was in hindsight a misjudgement.
The woman made all the right noises at the time I told her, but now she is blanking me. The change is obvious, as previously she always seemed to appear when I left the house/pulled up in the car, and now she never does. If she is there, she turns the other way. Her dil works in the local shop and tonight when I went in, she was in the back room, came out, saw me and went back into the back room (there was a second person there serving as well).
I feel like the whole family hate me now because I made a mistake with my puppy. They clearly blame me for his death and that really hurts. I feel uncomfortable in my own street now and don't know what to do. I was happy to have moved here to have friendly neighbours, but now they seem to hate me. How can I handle this?