While some welcome their in-laws into their hearts, others want nothing to do with them and try to give them a wide birth for their own sanity. A woman has been left outraged after her mother-in-law shipped her elderly dog off to kennels because she didn't want him around anymore.
Explaining how her mother-in-law is a "terrible person", the woman told Reddit of how her in-laws "bugged" her into swapping her beagle, Winston, for their younger dog called Minnie. She said: "We adopted a beagle named Winston from the shelter when he was already over 12-years-old.
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"His owner had passed and he was so sweet and sad we decided to take him home. He was with us for about a year and had a few health problems but nothing major.
"One weekend we went out of town and asked our in-laws to watch Winston while we were gone. When we got home my father-in-law was reluctant to return him as they had bonded over the three day weekend.
"My in-laws had a small shepherd dog at the time named Minnie. I hadn’t ever heard them complain about her in the past but when we picked up Winston my mother-in-law started making a huge deal about how Minnie was digging holes in their yard, which wasn’t some fancy yard but whatever.
"After a week or so of father-in-law bugging my husband we decided to trade Winston for Minnie. I figured it was a quiet environment for him being a senior and I hated to see Minnie wind up in a shelter which was what I suspected would happen."
The woman's in-laws cared for Winston for about a year when her father-in-law and her husband went on a trip together without the rest of their family.
"A few days after they left, my mother-in-law called me all upset. She said that Winston had a seizure and she took him to the vet and the vet wound up putting him down. I was in shock," she added.
"He had one very mild seizure when we had him and I knew he had a few when he was with them but they said he was being medicated."
But after their phone call ended, the woman started looking into her mother-in-law's story because she "couldn’t shake the feeling that something was wrong".
She said: "She added the detail that the vet didn’t charge her for putting him down because he felt sorry for her. It struck me as an odd, unnecessary detail.
"I decided to call their regular vet and ask about what happened. They told me that they hadn’t seen Winston and didn’t know what I was talking about. I decided to call another vet in that same area but I had to leave a message. This was on Friday afternoon.
"The vet was closed over the weekend and the boys returned home on Sunday. My husband and I went over the story and both picked out things that we thought didn’t add up. My husband asked his dad which vet she took him to and he said it was the first one I called.
"Monday morning the second vets office called me back. I asked if someone had brought in a beagle having a seizure and after a pause the woman told me that a woman in a bathrobe and slippers (no doubt my mother-in-law) had brought in a beagle and said she hit it with her car and didn’t know who it belonged to. They turned it in to the pound.
"The pound is not open on Monday so I had to wait until they opened on Tuesday to see if it was really him. I was there as soon as they unlocked the doors."
As soon as she walked into the kennels, she heard her dog's cry and burst into tears.
"I couldn’t believe that after everything he had been through, he had to spend four days in the pound abandoned again. It cost me over £200 to get him out which we did not have to spend but there was no way I was leaving him," she added.
"When I got home my husband couldn’t believe his eyes. We took him straight over to my in laws to confront her. She dug in and said that he was having a seizure, that the vet told her he was putting him down but he must have lied.
"We knew we weren’t getting anywhere so we left with Winston and went no contact for about a year. My husband still had a relationship with his dad but we never trusted her again.
"We ended up with both dogs and Winston was totally fine. He lived two more years before he developed cancer and had to be put down. Minnie never dug a single hole in my yard."
Do you have a dog story to share? Email paige.freshwater@reachplc.com.
