This weekends 'What would you do if?'

Okay, this weekends scenario is this:

A neighbour who lives down the road from you has a very large crossbred dog. You don't know her very well but you've exchanged a few words every now and again and you know eachother as doggy people. One morning she asks you if you could kindly look after her dog the following day as she has a family emergency to deal with and will be gone for a few hours. As your dog is friendly and accomodating you agree but tell her that you have a dentist appointment and ask if it would be okay to leave him alone with yours for around an hour. She tells you that he's always been fine being left and there should be no problem.

The following day, she brings the dog down to you and all goes well. Both your dog and hers play well together with no agression so you happily go off to the dentist. The dentist is running behind and you are gone for around an hour and a half.

On your return, your lounge is like a war zone. Your sofa is in a pieces, your carpet has been torn up, your curtains have been pulled down and chewed. Your coffee table now has three legs, the corner of your armchairs are chewed, there is broken ornaments and chewed cushions. Quite literally hundreds of pounds worth of damage. Your dog is okay.

In a blind rage you take her dog back to her when she gets back and invite her to come and survey the damage. However she refuses to believe that her dog is capable of such a thing and simply asks you to prove it. She clearly states that she belives your dog was stressed by her dog being there and did the damage himself.

You have no dog insurance and no proof that her dog did the damage. What would you do.......

as you cant prove it was her dog i dont think you can do anything unfortunatly . i dont think dog insurance would cover it but house hold insurance would youd have to claim that and maybe ask her to pay the excess

How do you come up with these!!! lol

Well I have to say I wouldn't have left my dog with hers in the house unsupervised even if she had stated it would be OK. Its like someone saying yeah its fine for my dog to be left alone with your child. I would be very dubious of leaving my dog alone with even someones dog who I knew really well.

I would have insisted she be back, or apologised that I could not take the dog or enquire why it was ok to leave the dog in MY house but not hers?? I would happily offer to let her dog out and walk it (with or without mine)

JMO

Unfortunately, you would be very lucky to find any household insurance that would cover pet damage.

I think that the only thing that you could do is kick yourself up the backside for being silly enough to leave an unknown entity not only in your house on it's own but with alone with your own dog and thank your lucky stars that it was only your furniture that it destroyed, not your dog!!

erm... I would have left the dog in a crate. It might be ok in its own home but being the first time in this house you could never guarantee how it would cope. Being able to leave it in a crate would have been the condition of looking after the dog x

I can't play the whole scenario - I would have taken her dog back to her house whilst I went to the dentist. My dog is too important to me to leave it alone with another dog just because someone says hers is fine with others ( no matter how accommodating mine is!). So then, the issue of the house getting wrecked could not have arisen.
Nor would I be without insurance, so I can't follow you there, either

My dogs don't get the run of the house whilst I am out let alone another dog.
I have to say it would not have got to that point with me in that there is no way I would have left them alone together.
TBH I'd wonder why I had to keep an eye on the dog the whole time and not maybe just pop over to see if ok, take for a nice walk to tire it out etc, as that does hint that it can't be left alone and again, another reason why it wouldn't be alone with my dog.

That's what I was going to say!

Firstly I would have put the dog in a crate , As the dog would be 1st with a dog it does not know extremley well and 2nd it would be in very strange surroundings , And 3rd tbh I would not trust a strange dog with any of my dogs unless supervised , Secondly as It is impossible to prove who's dog done the damage I doubt you will have any chance of getting the other owner to pay the damage or to even admit responsibility for the damage done , It is a very difficult situation tbh, I would also be very suprised if the home insurrance would cover the damage either , I guess it would have to be chalked up to a very stupid and costly experience , And be very grateful that both dogs are ok and did not injure or do worse to each other xxdk

I think a firm kick up my own backside would be the only recourse, but then, I wouldn't have left them alone together in the first place........