If your close family aren't "dog people"...

[MrsChnandlerBong]

How do you cope at Christmas/other holidays if you are going to theirs?

Invited up to my sisters for Christmas, as we do every year. This is second Christmas with dog. We get there at two ish and are expected to stay til gone 9.30 pm. Obviously we will go back at least twice for dog but I HATE leaving him. They all think I'm pathetic etc. How do you all manage it?

Not pathetic at all! Why not just go for a few hours (say 2.00 until 6.00pm or so) then come home and spend evening with your dog? Years ago I had Christmas lunch on my own caring for sick dog. My OH went to his daughter's house and I went to my sister's in the morning to drop off presents. I had satsumas and chocolate for lunch and realised that Xmas day TV is actually pretty awful. Never told family (said that OH was staying home). Years later (with another sick dog), allowed to take him to sister's house (they had cat then, who stayed in bedroom).

Not pathertic at all. My MIL is OK with dogs but I've never been comfortable taking my two there. So we just make sure our visits are no longer than about 5 hours, including travel.
My DSis is fine with dogs, thankfully, spoils them more than I do and I'm taking them and DD to hers on Christmas Day while DP works.

It's not pathetic. They are our family members :)

I tend to cut short visits or nip home. DH's extended (dull) family live quite far away so it's a great excuse to escape. Or we take the dog and leave him in the car and I get to escape check on him every hour and go for walks.

We're getting round it this year by having MIL/FIL/BIL to ours- our puppy will be 6 months old and I refuse to leave him all afternoon/evening, even with someone popping home once in the middle.

I'm not sure what we'll do in future years as MIL really prefers to do Christmas at her house.

Just keep the visit to within 5 hours out of the house. Presumably you'll be around for the days either side of Christmas Day so it'll be a one off period of time he's left alone.

My Dad and his partner aren't dog people. They have learned that if we can't bring the dogs with us, we will have to limit our visits to them. My Mum and her partner love our dogs so we usually spend Christmas with them!

Even my non-dog friendly family wouldn't think I'm pathetic, though. That's quite unkind of your sister IMO.

I've been wondering about this. We got a dog this year and she's lovely, sweet natured, calm, friendly and everything. In-laws have a great dog that does not like other dogs so I'm wondering how this is going to work.

We tend to go to my parents for Christmas day, they only live about five minutes walk down the road so it's easy enough for DH one of us to nip back a few times during the day to check on them.

My parents aren't really doggy at all, though they are very tolerant of ours. We've got four though and three of them are young, can be giddy and are total kleptomaniacs. Even though I'm sure they'd be welcomed it would make the whole day very stressful trying to retrieve stolen items and stop them doing wall of death round the house.

We always get sent home with a literal doggy bag of leftovers for them

If don't know anything about dogs their opinion isn't that relevant.

My parents were so not dog people... Until we got KikiDog in May. I think they love her more than us now! When we go visit they always say "remember to bring our little princess"

Would your sister not entertain your dog coming with you?

Have you asked her?

We checked that they were happy with dpup staying before we got him. We visit and stay over every other month and we didn't want to kennel our dog that often.

My mum refused to have nacho on xmas day last year as he had stole a gammon joint a few months earlier (his ninja skills were superb that day ) however she gave in and nacho got a reprieve and got to come with me to mum and dads.

We may have three dogs but we also have their only grandchild :o