Woman gets local dog Olympics canceled instead of accommodating neighbor. AITA?
When this woman is annoyed with her neighbor, she asks Reddit:
"AITA for getting our neighborhood dog Olympics canceled instead of bending the rules for a neighbor?"
I understand that this is a silly issue to have, but it's an issue we have an I need advice. 5-6 years ago my HOA decided our neighborhood is boring and encouraged people to come up with ideas/activities to liven things up. This, my Pup Olympics was born.
It's just the neighborhood dogs competing (poorly), in different silly events for 2 days and being rewarded with treats. Early on there would be prizes for the owners of whichever dog won each event, and it really was all fun and games.
After a couple years we started doing a paid entry for each event, and the money went toward cash prizes and a donation to a really great local animal shelter (where lots of us got our pups!).
Might be worth it to note that most people in the neighborhood choose to donate their cash prize toward the shelter fund, so we usually come up with a pretty great donation. People look forward to the Olympics every year, it's ridiculous but it's fun and we all loved it.
18 months ago a new neighbor moved in and she has a Poodle who frequently competes in (and wins) dog competitions. This dog has a million followers on Instagram. We all follow the page and obvious root for this dog in the competitions. No issue with the dog itself.
However, it ruined pup Olympics last year. This dog swept every single competition. There is literally one event for senior dogs that it didn't qualify for and that's the only one that this Poodle didn't win. We all just kind of stood there for two days and gave cash prizes to the same woman for every event.
To make matters worse, she also didn't donate a single extra penny to the shelter fund (bonus AITA for if I'm wrong for being judgey here). This has taken a event for families and kinds and turned it into something it was never meant to be. It's like having a professional athlete compete at a high school field day.
So, Pup Olympics are happening soon, but this year my committee decided on "No Competition Dogs" rule, to make it more fair for the other owners/families.
The Poodle owner got notice of this and has gone ballistic. Our HOA had a committee meeting and decided in her favor, that we couldn't exclude her or her dog if we wanted to have the competition in the neighborhood.
I thought about it and then just went ahead and sent a cancelation notice out. Somebody from the HOA board tried to pull it back together but just isn't getting much interest.
Now the Poodle owner has sent me multiple vindictive messages implying that I did this to hurt her personally and the neighborhood is split 50/50 on who was in the wrong. So, am I the asshole?
To clarify, deciding to cancel was more of a long story short after 4 days of meetings with this woman to try to come up with something agreeable.
First, I offered to do a couple of categories for more serious competition dogs, but was told by the HOA that I'm not allowed to host any kind of events that make it seem like any part of this is a 'real' dog competition.
Then I tried to restrict how many events each dog can enter, and she wanted that number to be 8. Out of 10 events, she wanted 8. That was the number she got the HOA board to agree with her on, and they basically told me that if I couldn't let that happen, then I couldn't host the competition. AITA?
Let's see what readers thought.
7hrown writes:
NTA. If you had a race for neighborhood kids and an olympic gold medalist runner showed up to enter, that'd be an AH move. This is no different, and the fact that the owner can't understand why her precious shouldn't be allowed to dominate the amateur competitions shows a huge lack of awareness.
chuckutex writes:
NTA- and I would make a "press release" to all concerned. I am disappointed that the original spirit of charitable neighborhood comradery and good will has been usurped into a competition where a ringer wins (and then keeps!)...
all the prizes where the local animal shelter has always been the biggest beneficiary of the event, which was never really a competition, but just a good time. To that end, I am unwilling to put forth the time, effort and money to make the event what it once was- but I hold no trademarks- anyone else can do what they want.
I will seek another way to support the shelter. If that's interesting to you, let me know, let's put our heads together and figure something out.