Air bnb owner ott or do we deserve to be chucked out?

[Pilloh]

We were forced out of our house due to a water leak in the house. The insurance company said we had to move out due to the severity of the work.

A bit of a nightmare for us as we have a large dog. He’s been called a wonderfully mannered dog by a qualified behaviourist outside the house who really doesn’t care about people/other dogs. But he is a breed used for guarding and therefore very barky at home (we have a command that gets him to be quiet but it doesn’t stop the impulse to bark initially). Not to make excuses, we were working on this with the behaviourist pre-pandemic but our progress stalled so we just manage the situation. Ie we have gates all around our house/garden, don’t allow strangers and the dog to meet inside the house (he’s totally fine with people when they are not on “his” property). Our house is basically Fort Knox and only DH and I are here so it’s all pretty easy to manage.

We told the air bnb owner that please tell the cleaner not to enter house or garden without telling us as dog will run up and bark at strangers. He agreed. We explained the situation and he said he understood.

Yesterday pm, cleaner comes into the garden when I was playing footy - she was fetching something from shed. Dog ran towards her and barked. I gave the recall command which worked initially but then my dog ran back to cleaner and barked. It’s no doubt intimidating. After 20 ish secs dog was in the house and I apologised. Recall is not full proof hence why we never rely on it. We would never have found an Airbnb where we were not assured we would be informed of any person entering the property.

Owner has messaged now saying the cleaner won’t return whilst we are here and that means we have to leave as the owner is not ok with the house not being maintenanced.

Cleaner has visited 4 times without incident as the right procedures were followed.

Who is being unreasonable?

Looks like you need a new keyboard, your caps key seems to be stuck.

I don't think YABU @Pilloh . I doubt many people would be happy to rent a property where the cleaner just ships up unannounced. That's not acceptable regardless of the dog.

No I would not be “ok” with it

but I would still “respect” her

@melj1213 finally someone talks sense. She turned up on private property with out permission regardless of dog or not - who does that ?
I have three dogs - if you ring the dorrbell here they go crazy barkeing thats what dogs do. You swear it was Rotweillers the noise they make but its three tiny jack russels.
Op i ma glad you got a resolution and am so sorry you had to deal with all this

I don't respect people who don't respect my privacy.

As I said before, me and DH were amazed to find when we moved that so many people think it is ok to walk into our back garden through a 6ft solid gate and walk up the path and knock on the back door. Neighbours, meter readers, scrap men.

We have a front door with a much shorter walk up the garden and no gate. I find it odd and rude and I certainly don't respect any of the people that thought it was ok.

We have a glass back door and to come up to it and knock and even peer in is totally out of order which is why we now have a locked back gate. Plus we don't want some idiot opening the gate and one of our dogs runs out

Definitely not unreasonable OP. Dog was startled by someone coming in unannounced and dog reacted, the owner should have made cleaner aware or said no from the off. I couldn't stay in a place where someone could just rock up without warning, dog or not. You'll never win here because you mentioned a dog.

is this air bnb owner new to air bnb?

because if this cleaner just rocks up unannounced regularly - then intriguing that not mentioned in reviews? Or the owner not gone out of business!

but it would seem that given the owner is willing to lose out financially - it’s the first time it’s ever happened

As I said before, me and DH were amazed to find when we moved that so many people think it is ok to walk into our back garden through a 6ft solid gate and walk up the path and knock on the back door. Neighbours, meter readers, scrap men.

and your front door is closer and easily accessible and very clear that a front door?

in that case - this is very odd. The massive majority of us have a front door, and a back door - and don’t many has multiple people very regularly ignoring the front door and instead deciding to make their lives more difficult by ignoring the front door and going around the back

Sorry solicitor is a lock on your “6 ft solid gate” 😐

This. But if the insurance company is paying I appreciate you just want a roof over your head.

The reactive dog really is a separate issue to your privacy not being respected.

I think it would be extremely hard to train most dogs to not bark if a stranger enters your property without warning, that’s just normal dog behaviour, cleaner should have let you know in advance.

I meant surely solution!

"Fwiw the pandemic was a huge issue for anyone with a reactive dog & I can totally see how the combination of things meant the training dropped off & you got comfy with how to manage him in your home & that's actually ok.

I'd legit not come back to this thread if I were you, for your own wellbeing"

Absolutely agree with this.
MN expects dog owners to be psychics who can predict the issues that lay ahead of them. How dare you pick a big powerful breed that you could handle and train effectively at the time of getting them, and not foresee the crippling mental health struggle that you'll face after a world wide pandemic, which will impact your ability to upkeep that said wonderful training you were doing. How foolish of you OP.
I think the Airbnb owner has duty of care to their staff which they are rightfully fulfilling. I don't think either of you are being unreasonable really. But I do think the people on this thread are.
I hope your mental health improves, and you're able to concur this behavioural issue. When I had postnatal depression I really struggled with the upkeep of training with my GSD, I gave him the bare minimum (walked and fed) anything more was too much. Now we're back to normal, maybe a bit less time for training but something has to give. So I get the struggle. Ignore the negativity, just keep trying to do your best, it will come back.

Yes it's obviously a front door. We live in a row of semi detached houses and we all have a front door and a back door.

Most of the neighbours use their back door to go in and out and park at the back. We park at the front and use our front door like normal people. Quite a few neighbours have asked why we use our front door and say it is a northern thing to use the back.

Our back gardens are on to a road so neighbours would be walking down their back gardens and then along to our back garden.

Me and DH can't get our heads round it and find it very strange. We would never ever walk into someone's back garden unless asked to

We do now have a lock on our back gate as I said but we should not have to put a lock on it.

A couple of weeks ago DH unlocked the gate and forgot to re-lock it. Lo and behold I had a scrap man tapping on the back door. I was in my dressing gown and was pretty annoyed. I think the scrap guy got that as I shouted at him and told him to use the front door like a normal person.

We have lived in quite a few places - London, Essex, Kent, Cambridgeshire and never had this before

And locking the 6 ft solid door isn’t an option?

why are your neighbours so regularly popping around?

so it is locked. Ok, problem solved. Probably best to have door to your back garden, especially with a dog, locked anyway

I'm surprised they let to you in the first place tbh, especially when they have staff going in to maintain the house.

It's shit for you OP but I guess the owner doesn't want to be liable for any dog related incidents happening in his property. He has to rely on the cleaner remembering to warn you - if they forget and the cleaner is attacked I assume he would be liable for allowing a dog that he was pre warned may bite in the cleaners workplace. I can see why he's changed his mind after what happened - his priority has to be his employees.

In the garden in the daytime? Could get charged for that.

"Maybe they are robots and not dogs?"

How about, maybe they are trained and don't see every person in the world as a threat? You know, because they are pets that live in a human environment. 🙀

If the cleaner thinks she can walk into the garden unannounced, when she's been asked to give notice, and there is a sign on the gate, I doubt she'd think twice about entering the house unannounced.

But regardless, the op could have been sunbathing topless, or doing literally anything else she doesn't want other people seeing, she was in her private garden that she is paying for.

She doesn't even need to have been doing something, she could have just wanted to sit in peace without people traipsing through her garden, as is her right while the property is being leased to her.

It doesn't matter what she was or wasn't doing, the cleaner shouldn't have walked in like it is public property.

Whatever way you spin it, the cleaner was in the wrong.

If the cleaner knows the property is occupied, she should be knocking on the front door like anyone else would.

@Hippobot have you ever met a dog? They bark when people they don't know come into their house. That's guard dogs and doodles alike.

Tut, tut, get a dog that you can manage. Time and time again, clowns getting large breed dogs to show off with; with neither the control, authority or ability to handle them. He is absolutely correct to ask you to leave.

@mydogisthebest calling everyone a rude idiot doesn’t do you any favours. You’re coming across as the exact type of dog owner that everyone else detests. Of course everyone else is at fault and the poor dog is the victim 🙄