Airbnb guest let her dogs loose in my garden

[willowwonder]

I live on the same row of houses as an Airbnb. The Airbnb is in the middle of the row. My house and garden is at the end of the row, where there is a dropped kerb, and an open driveway/parking area leading into the garden. So there is no gate, just the driveway opening. Garden has usual garden things, like kids toys, sheds, raised planters, etc.

This morning, the Airbnb guest walked right past us putting kids in the car, she turned into my driveway, and walked into my garden - with 2 dogs. I was strapping the toddler in and honestly took me a few seconds to register what was going on. Once she reached the grass in the garden, she let the 2 dogs off the lead! And then they were running around my garden!! She was sort of wandering about, looking at my raised beds, totally casual.

So DH followed her and called after her "what are you doing??" I couldn't hear her reply but after a few seconds they both appeared back. The dogs were running about. One jumped into my car. I pushed it out and DH got in the car, sort of rolling his eyes. I heard the woman say "I was told it was dog friendly here...". Haha - what, in my garden!??

This is an absolutely wild thing for her to do, right?? The Airbnb isn't even next door. Like, there is no world in which she would have thought my garden was part of her Airbnb property. She just walked down the street, past a few houses, past ME and into my garden, to let her dogs run around it. Presumably to poo.

What on earth could have been going through her head??

AIBU to think this is INSANE behaviour?

Some people are just fucking freaks. I presume the Airbnb is dog-friendly, from which she for some reason extrapolated that the whole street is too

Check the Airbnb listing to ensure that it doesn't include anything about a garden on it, you never know what people will post.

CFs are never in short supply. I used to live in a cottage in a holiday area. There was a defunct footpath which ended near our gardens and walkers would fight their way through thick undergrowth to get into our gardens and continue their walk. Most of them couldn't understand why we complained about it because "we're just walking through". My neighbour used to say "give me your address and I'll come and walk through your garden". An official notice was eventually put up which deterred most of them.

we live next door to a campsite and I have had occasion to tell people that this is our home and not part of the campsite so please get your idiot children out of our pond where they could drown as you are too busy necking wine / beer to keep an eye on where they are and what they are doing!

I have fought through “defunct” footpaths because they are not defunct at all; the householders just hope that brambles and other obstructions will render the path non-operational.

We used to have an Airbnb next door, and when I say next door, I mean it’s like down the lane. We are a farm and it’s the next house down the road. I cannot tell you the bonkers shit that has happened.

I once was woken up from a nap by the Airbnb guests’ children. Literally I was in bed and I woke up to a 6 year old poking me. He wanted to tell me that my chickens had laid and egg. He was holding said egg. Apparently, they’d climbed into our chicken run to collect eggs. When I returned him, his parents (and possibly dad’s new girlfriend, it was a weird set up, seemed to be the parents of the children plus a woman who seemed romantically linked to the dad 😳 anyway, I digress…) were just sitting in the kitchen drinking and completely oblivious to the fact that their small child had wandered down the road into someone’s farmyard and then into their house! They did not thank me for returning him.

We had another group who let themselves into our house because they couldn’t work out the lock box. So they came down the road to us, came into our house, while I was in the shower (!!), and Dh found them standing outside the bathroom with some of their luggage knocking and trying to talk to me in the shower. He was like, what the hell are you doing? They couldn’t find the key apparently. So they came to our house and when we didn’t answer (Dh was working in a barn and I was showering), they let themselves in to see if they could find someone to help. Dh was like, we have no idea where your key is! Call or message the host.

These same people managed to lock themselves out (all four of them!) while unloading food shopping at 10pm that night and they bloody came back! I was literally in bed and they were banging on the door because they wanted to know if we had a spare key. I had a whole lot less patience by then and ripped them a new one. One of the wives came over sheepishly the next day to apologise because I think I scared them so much with how crazy I was. 😂

Airbnb is now sold and we have lovely full time neighbours who are wonderful to live down the road from.

I did once have to return a not-very-nearby neighbour's children to her, saying, "Found your twins playing in our back garden." Rather than apologising and thanking me for their safe return (they were about 5), she said, "Well, you have a paddling pool and a trampoline, and we don't."

Maybe she now has dogs instead.

Ugh, dog piss in your garden

We have also had people try to come in our house! It’s quite different but obviously a house with people living in it!
We also have people regularly use our field despite private signs on the gate (which they have to open).

Some dog owners are entitled twats

My ds has a staffie and the most responsible dog owner ever (he takes it very seriously),but he's sick of yappy breeds attacking his dog and getting the blame because 'mine wouldn't hurt a fly' (as theirs hang off his dogs neck)

My entitled arsehole neighbours got a staffie and we had zero problems with that dog

And then they got a small,yappy nasty dog

They allow it to shit in our garden,(we fixed the hole in the hedge that was allowing it to come into our garden,so they broke that,we fixed it and they re-broke it) they leave it to bark all day and have shouted at us to daring to use our own garden (because we where 'teasing' it)

It's also gone for our ankles and attacked ds's dog while he was trying to wee in our garden-they thought it was funny and that we shouldn't have allowed 'our' dog to use our garden

(theirs shouldn't have been in our garden but that's gone over their head)

Bring back dog licences-cant prove your a responsible owner?

The dog is taken away from you (I can dream)

(In our case,we own our house and they are council so I complained to the housing
They denied everything but have left our hedge alone so theirs isn't coming into our property anymore
However the dog shit (that they never pick up) has been stinking to high heaven during the heatwave and its still screaming in their garden all day)

This thread has everything! A diagram. Cfs. Dogs. Parking. Entitlement.

absolute mic drop

I’m done

I think I understand the set-up. The guy on my left is end of terrace (in a private cul de sac) and you can in theory enter his garden, as it's not gated, and a couple of neighbours' dogs have gone in once or twice over the years, but the owners have always run in after the dog and apologised.

Could you get a gate which could end this nonsense? Shouldn't have to, but an Air bnb unfortunately makes it a necessity now. I know how annoying it is. When I lived in a very quiet part of London (where I'm from) it got so busy with these shit Air bnbs popping up, so many guests used to knock on my door, thinking I was the bloody Air bnb. They're a pain and shouldn't be allowed on residential streets in my opinion.

Or even your door number put up by the entrance to the garden. A few of my neighbours do this to show that it's theirs.

Ok so the front wall (I presume there's something around the sides/back too, makes it fairly clear from the diagram. (Thank you. 🤗)

I would say a gate might help and make it even clearer, but yeah given the set up what a cheeky mare.

It just needs a MIL

That's mad. Your (amazing) diagram makes it very clear that she had zero business being in your garden - especially as the cottage she has booked has a bloody garden! That's where the dogs go and wee. That's the dog-friendly bit.

WTF is wrong with people?!

That was not the case here though. The path itself had fallen away and no longer existed, so once through the undergrowth they veered into our gardens. I am sure if a resident had told you that you were in a private garden you would not have just marched on without apology.

Clear signage put a stop to it.

Also. The absence of a gate changes nothing. It is CLEARLY a private garden.

She'd have gone through the fucker anyway, if it was gated.

@TheOnlyWayIsIlford it will be really hard for you not to say “I told you so” if his dog gets shot by the farmer who owns the livestock.

!!!! 🤣

Or a ‘leave the bastard’ for the dh handling it too politely

to clarify op I don’t mean I don’t think your thread is not real it’s so mad and they’re So cheeky you couldn’t make it up !

Not if I had my trusty footpath map showing a right of way…

It's not about being dog friendly. Presumably you'd have been mad if her kids had gone running in your garden too? So tell her that the property she has paid for is fully friendly for her dogs, kids, snakes, rabbits-but she hasn't paid for yours, so it's not open to any of her circus.
Is she as bad at controlling her kids? Watch out for them too!

Or perhaps it just wasn’t a right of way. The poster will have clearly known if there was when she bought the house.

That’s so bizarre. I’m a dog owner and I woukd never let my dog randomly run around someone else’s garden.

Sounds like a footpath along the coast and it’s now in the sea. Doesn’t matter what your map says if the land doesn’t exist at that place anymore.

A friend has a house where there used to be a road behind it. No more it’s now a very very long way below the houses. Good luck driving on it just because an old map says there is a road.

Come on OP, you live in a tourist area, you must know that a good percentage of tourists leave their brain at home when they come on holiday!!