'AITA if I told my mom that her dogs are the only ones not allowed on family vacation?' UPDATED 2X

"AITA if I tell my mom that her dogs are the only ones not allowed on family vacation?"

My mom has two half Yorkie half Maltese dogs, these dogs are my mom's world. The problem is they are obsessed with food, they will go to any lengths to get human food. It started with a bag of barbecue potatoes chips on my kitchen counter ripped open and devoured, leaving a huge barbeque dust mess

Next was an entire pizza that was snatched off of the table the moment I went to grab sodas from the kitchen. In the span of less than a minute when I returned half of the pizza was gone, the dogs were standing in the other half of the pizza and there was pizza sauce all over my carpet.

Next get together they found there way inside even tho I asked my mom to keep them in the backyard. They got into my kitchen and tore open 2 bags of hamburger buns, and ate around 40 dollars worth of seasoned raw hamburger meat and a block of cheddar cheese. At this point I told my mother her dogs were not allowed at my home.

She has stopped coming by altogether, which does hurt my feelings because if it's a choice between her kid and the dogs she will always pick the dogs. I'm planning a family vacation, booked a nice cabin for the whole family to stay in. My sister is bringing her dog (well behaved female Pitt) so I know it's going to be an issue when I tell my mom her dogs are not allowed to come with us.

I don't want to spend the whole weekend making sure not a single scrap of food is left out for even a second otherwise her dogs with tear it apart and potentially make a huge mess in the cabin I paid the deposit on.

My sister told me to just tell my mom that she has to keep a close eye on her dogs but I have tried that before and she's proven time and time again that she's either unable or unwilling to control her dogs behavior. AITA if I tell my mom her food crazed dogs are not allowed on family vacation even tho another dog will be there?

The internet did not hold back at all.

unreliable_ibex wrote:

NTA but just say "no dogs" to avoid hurt feelings. Is that an option?

OP responded:

So my sister's dog Lola (the beautiful pittie) gets pretty horrible separation anxiety. Last time my sister left her at a kennel she was banned from the establishment for behavior problems. Other than that she's a saint, I don't want her to be punished because of my mom's dogs behavior.

Mira_DFalco wrote:

Nope, NTA. If your mom is going to insist on her feral destructo-mutts being included, she needs to book the accommodations and be responsible for the deposit. Otherwise she's just going to have to be content with staying in the doghouse.

Even if she does step up for that, I wouldn't share accommodations with animals that are so out of control. Sorry, not sorry, but I wouldn't tolerate every meal turning into a battle to keep my food.

OP responded:

Destructo-mutts made me laugh 😅😅.

SwimAccomplished9487 wrote:

And I bet mom would blame everyone else if the dogs ate something dangerous that made them sick or killed them…

OP responded:

My mom has bragged that her dogs ate a half a box of chocolate covered cordial cherries and didn't get sick. I'm worried she thinks they can't get sick.

Two days later, OP shared an update.

Packing up at the end of the vacation, a few of you asked me to update on what happened. I don't know how to copy links so I guess click on my profile to read the old post? Idk how the internet works y'all are smart enough to figure it out.

Took the cowards way out and asked my dad to break it to her that her dogs weren't invited. He wasn't happy about it but he said he gets it, then he told me some mildly disturbing stuff that he was just laughing off?

Like they had bought a locked bread box for pastries on the counter that had been chewed to pieces in order to get to the cinnamon rolls inside and showed me a picture of the bottom of their fridge that had been extensively chewed like the dogs were desperately biting and clawing to get inside. He stated he loves the dogs too but could understand why someone wouldn't want them around during vacation.

Dad reported mom took it well and the dogs would stay over at their neighbors who they are good friends with. I was relieved. Everyone showed up and started unpacking except my mom who my dad said was tying things up at the house and she would be by later. Mom didn't show up that night and I missed her.

The next day mom did show up but (as many commenters suspected) brought her dogs with her. Tried to play it off as nothing giving out hugs and smiles but I was upset. I also tried to play it cool but I told her that her dogs were not to enter the cabin and that they could not stay the night. She waved me off "yah yah ok I get it"

It was fine for a few hours but then I noticed some dirty napkins were floating around in the breeze. I discovered that the garbage bag we had tied to the picnic table had the bottom ripped out and paper plates had been shredded and licked clean. I cleaned up the mess furious and confronted my mother and told her this is exactly why her dogs weren't invited.

My mom tried to blame my sisters dog for the mess "you didn't see what happened it could have been her..." I told her that there was no way I would blame Lola for the mess since her dogs are known for doing this kind of thing. My mom clammed up and said "fine I will just take them home" and left with the dogs.

My dad wasn't happy after that, saying I didn't have any proof and I went too hard on her. My uncle thought it was funny and he was glad to "not have the little bastards trying to steal his hotdog." It put a damper on the whole trip. I just feel like an idiot for trying to make this work in the first place.

I miss my mom and I wanted to make family memories but it really does feel like the dogs and my mom are a packaged deal now and asking her to leave them even for a short time was never an option. A lot of people said this in the comments, I don't think I was ready to hear it yet. Thanks for being so responsive and the comments really did help me see the reality of the situation I'm in now.

The comments kept coming.

[deleted] wrote:

NTA. A little off topic but are those dogs okay? It sounds like they’re being starved or locked in crates all day long with no way of getting energy out. Like, what your dad said is some extreme s#$t. Those dogs will d*e horrible deaths if they’re left to just eat trash and the fridge…I’d shame the hell out of my mom every single time I saw her.

OP responded:

People are asking about if my parents are starving their dogs so I'll say, I don't think so. They are quick and small but they've also got some chunk on them. I think it's more that they only eat people food. I've never seen either of my parents feed them dog food, it's always some kind of scraps from their plate. They might be giving them dog food at home I just haven't seen it.

SuperPookyPower wrote:

Plot twist: OP’s mom doesn’t have dogs at all. She has feral badgers.

Over-Masterpiece4600 wrote:

I'm so sorry you've had to go through all this. Obviously, both your Mother and her dogs need to go through some serious training sessions. The only thing I'm confused about is how the dogs managed to eat hamburger buns & hamburger patties at your last BBQ. A Yorkie-Maltese Mix is a small dog. Are they somehow able to leap on to your kitchen counters?

OP responded:

Explained this in the previous post so I'll do one here since I know I'll get this question a lot: They are very smart very nimble dogs. They know how to move chairs and pull out drawers to use as halfway points to get wherever they want to get.

When I figured that out I asked my mom to keep them in my backyard but they got inside my house anyway. That's when they got a full ban cause I couldn't trust her to keep track of them.

Two days later, OP shared another update.

Final update: Things have escalated and I'm done Just gonna jump right in and try to keep it short. I talked with my sis about the chance of my mom's dogs getting sick or dying from eating out of the trash.

My mom has always gotten along better with my sister so I asked her if there was any point in trying to talk to her about getting her dogs trained. She set up a dinner at Wingstop for the 3 of us. I directly asked my mom at dinner if she fed her dogs dog food or only people food. She got offended and said yes of course I feed them 2 cups of food for lunch and dinner.

I told her that 4 cups of food was already a lot of food for 2 small dogs on top of getting table scraps. My mom said she didn't want to discuss her dogs any further but my sister jumped in and said that the dogs were why she invited her. She said that she had done some research on dog trainers and found an affordable program.

She offered to pay for it in full, all my mom would have to is take them. My mom said that was very generous of her but didn't accept or deny it. My mom started looking nervous and said that she had forgotten to do something and needed to take off early. I thought well we tried, let her leave. My sister followed her outside and I settled the bill

When I left I saw my mom and sister were still there and her dogs were doing small laps around my mom's legs. I was extremely confused I just kinda stood there dumbfounded like "how the hell did they get here?" My sister was yelling at my mom I would never do something like this to Lola this is completely unacceptable!

My mom yelled back it's less than 60 degrees out and it's nighttime they were fine!

My sister fired back "so if we hadn't made you mad how long would you have just left them out here while we were eating??!?!"

My mom ignored her grabbed her dogs in a huff and left. My sister was fuming saying she was lucky nobody saw her dogs in the car otherwise my mom would be dealing with the p*lice. I wish I could say I was surprised that my mom's had left her dogs in the car but I wasn't.

I've texted her a couple times since then but she's not responding to anything my sister or I send her. I won't be updating again, everyone is mad at each other and I don't see anything positive coming out of this situation. I'm gonna take the advice of some of the commenters and just let her go. I tried my best to include and help her and it only made everything more awful 😞

The comments kept coming.

pixie-ann wrote:

Your mum seems to have lost all reason when it comes to the dogs and she is not caring for them properly.

Is this standard behaviour for your mum or something new and exciting to deal with?

OP responded:

She's always been soft spoken but extremely stubborn. Like you can tell her something and she will say oh yah ok sure but she's just gonna do whatever she was gonna do in the first place. We had cats as kids so the dogs are a new addition to the situation

mdsnbelle responded:

I'm going ask this, but please understand that the sleepy edible just kicked in so the phrasing might not come across the best. It's coming from a good place, tho. Growing up did you guys get what you needed emotionally, physically, all that stuff that you needed FROM HER?

Her being this weird about the dogs is giving some do-over energy, and I want to make sure that if that's the case, you're supported in whatever she's feeling this guilty about.

OP responded:

I'm not sure if that's the case or not to be honest with you. When we were kids my parents were super into poker and they both worked full time so I didn't see them very much. I started to learn how to make casseroles and hamburger helper for dinner because often times it would just be me and my sister.

When I was 6 I noticed my mom stopped doing my laundry so I started doing it for myself. Teachers would ask me why I didn't have a lunch packed, truth was my mom and dad didn't do or make me do it so I just didn't do it. I don't think she feels bad about it though. I brought this stuff up to her before and she said it sounds like a pretty normal childhood.

roxxx03 wrote:

You'll be back with a Final Final update when one of the dogs chokes on a bone. Because that's what is is eventually going to come to sadly.

OP responded:

I really really hope not but I think you're right.