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?

As for your hypothetical scenario about the cleaner making a personal injury claim (after being attacked) and the dog being put down - all that could totally be avoided if the OP just trained her dog.
It was totally avoided in actuality too. The cleaner wasn’t bitten. Happy to clear that up for you.

And incidentally, I was not posing a hypothetical scenario- I was addressing yours and where blame would lay in those circumstances, with reference to how it would likely be treated under the law.

'dogs don't operate within human moral boundaries' is exactly the point here, a human has a complex thought process when carrying out any task, 'attackers' DO have moral boundaries, they just choose to ignore them, they know exactly what there actions will do to someone and how it will make them feel and they do it regardless.

A dog has NO moral boundaries and a very limited 'thought' process and responds instinctively, it looks to you as it's owner to see how to react from there but nothing will stop that first instinct to warn and protect from kicking in, it's a defence mechanism that serves them well. The dog is saying 'I don't know who you are or if you'll hurt me so don't come any closer' but it communicates that by claiming its territory and barking. To the people saying it's a pre-curser to an attack, it's a load of bollocks, if the dog wanted to attack the cleaner it would have done, it didn't.

Holding dogs to human standards of behaviour and likening it to a person running at you with a knife is quite frankly, ridiculous.

Meanwhile, dogs ARE trained to operate within certain boundaries

I would argue that OPs dog operated within those boundaries, it didn't launch itself at her in a feeding frenzy like some of you are suggesting.

the only difference was it took two commands to recall it, without further info it's hard to know why, it may have still felt threatened, or the 'intruder' may have come further into the garden when the dog retreated the first time, hard to say.

If the cleaner had been seriously injured, the dog owners on here, like myself, would be responding entirely differently to this thread I'm sure, any dog that would attack a person who accidentally stumbles upon it should not be alive IMO, at a bare minimum they should be behind a LOCKED gate, so OP would be held to a higher standard, a dog running up to an unexpected intruder and barking at them is just natural dog behaviour, it's unfortunate that the cleaner was scared by it, but they really shouldn't have done what they did, I'd have been livid over the intrusion of privacy, whether my dogs barked at them or not!

You sound stressful.
What breed of dog us it OP?

Lockdown was years ago!

But the Air B&B owner is not forcing you to stay. Just find another place.

Get your money back on time taken away.

Yup

Don't patronise me! I'm not thick.

I'm fully aware the cleaner wasn't bitten. However, there's no saying that she wouldn't have been... or won't be in the future.

As another PP said, we can argue all we like about whether the cleaner is at fault, for going in unannounced or whether the landlord has broken the Ts & Cs of the agreement. None of that is relevant.

The only thing that is relevant is that this dog - by OP's own admission - is untrained, which makes him volatile and liable to cause serious injury. The End.

Happy to clear that up for you. 🙄

I'm fully aware the cleaner wasn't bitten. However, there's no saying that she wouldn't have been... or won't be in the future.

If she keeps randomly walking into peoples back gardens uninvited then she may well get bitten in the future.. it would be prudent for her to stop doing that.. for her own safety.

All this fuss because of a dog. You seem to be making life harder for yourself.

Untrained not to bark when strangers enter his home does not mean he is liable to cause serious injury. What a reach.

Your labelling of something as ‘not relevant’ does not make it so. To any reasonable-minded person, someone entering into a private garden, unannounced and uninvited, when they have been made aware that this will likely result in a dog barking them, is absolutely of relevance to a complaint that the dog barked at them (even if you don’t consider it the sole or most important factor).

Yes, the OP’s dog requires further training (although given that he has received quite a lot of training already, calling him ‘untrained’ is false). However, even if every single dog owner diligently trained their dogs to prevent all undesirable behaviours, they don’t drop out of their mothers pre-trained and training can be a lengthy process - so even in an ideal world it would remain stupid and dangerous (not to mention rude) to enter somebody else’s property unannounced in the hope that any dogs on-premises have completed their training.

The cleaner seems to require better training herself.

Of course, I forgot, always the victim's fault. Got it! 🙄

Well, yes.

If someone trespasses where there is a dog, they may get barked at or bitten. Their fault. I would say the dog is the victim there.

Put your hand in a cage with a hamster you might get bitten.

Climb into a lion enclosure you might get bitten.

It's really not the same as abuse from a human who knows better.

I get it. Everyone else is at fault, other than a large dog, and the owner of said large dog she admits she can't control.

But let's just keep blaming a cleaner just trying to carry out her minimum wage job.

You didn't need to respond but thanks for confirming what I just said. 👍

Why are you assuming it's a minimum paid job?

The cleaner and/ or Airbnb owner really should be notifying all guests when they enter the property. It's just standard practice and is on the Airbnb policy page.

Nope, I don't see someone who breaks safety rules around animals as a victim. That's your hyperbole.

And you are welcome!

No, whether a victim of an incident is at fault (wholly or partially) depends on the particular circumstances.

For example, where someone is unintentionally hit by a train, the fact that they have ignored warning signs and stood on train tracks is relevant.

Victim-blaming is, of course, heinous in certain circumstances (sexual crimes being the obvious context where there is often a high degree of completely unwarranted victim-blaming) but that does not mean that no blame can reasonably be attributed to any victim of any incident in every possible set of circumstances (either as a matter of law or common sense).

why does it have to be about who’s at fault, or who’s to blame, at some point you just need to take responsibility for your own personal safety.

Trespassing on peoples private property is a recipe for disaster.

There wasn't a victim!

Why is this thread getting more & more rabid? Even by mn anti-dog standards this is next level

I get it. Everyone else is at fault, other than a large dog, and the owner of said large dog she admits she can't control.

pretty much what you just said to be honest, by its very nature the dog cannot be ‘at fault’ here, he was minding his own business on his own property, he reacted as most dogs would to a stranger intruding on their property, it’s in their nature to protect their people by warning away potential threats, he wasn’t to know the cleaner wasn’t a threat, because he’s just a dog. I’m not sure what else OP could have done, she called him and put him inside the house, then apologised.

The fault for how this situation came about does firmly lie with the cleaner I’m afraid, they had a protocol to follow and they didn’t, they knew the reasons behind it and just disregarded them on this occasion for unknown reasons.

Im not entirely sure why you’re so set on labelling the cleaner a victim? A victim of what? It’s like if you cross a field with a bull in it, after reading a sign saying ‘dangerous bull, do not enter’ then get chased by the bull, you’re only a victim of your own stupidity.

You are both ok here. You were completely up front about your dog's behaviour. You've done nothing wrong. The air B&B owner thought that she'd be able to work with you being there, and then when it happened, realised that it meant she would have to spend loads of time and energy arranging how normal visitors (maintenance people/delivery people etc) would access the property, and realised that some of them would be weary of the dog. This meant it would make it much more hassle and could put people off serving the property for her. You did right, she did right. I can see why it's annoying, but all the time you chose to have an untrained dog, then you chose to risk being turned away because it's a bother to people, because it's very ok for people to do that, especially when you've got the dog on their private property.

Trespassing on peoples private property is a recipe for disaster.

Just as it is allowing an untrained, large dog to stay at an Air BnB! The landlord realised it was indeed a 'recipe for disaster' and acted accordingly.