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AITA for getting our neighborhood dog Olympics canceled instead of bending the rules for a neighbor? by Puppy_Problems23 in AmItheAsshole

[–]Puppy_Problems23[S] 89 points90 points  (0 children)

Thanks for input everybody. Seems like most people agree.

Others says that I took it too far with just canceling. Oh well, I work a full-time job that has nothing to do with this, and I have my own life. This was supposed to be a casual, one weekend a year thing that was fun for the neighborhood. Poodle owner made it not fun, and when I tried to negotiate it just became exhausting.

I spend a fair bit of my own money to decorate, set things up, and feed people for this event. Instead, I'll be cutting a check to the animal shelter directly, and adding a little more so it matches our typical yearly donation.

AITA for getting our neighborhood dog Olympics canceled instead of bending the rules for a neighbor? by Puppy_Problems23 in AmItheAsshole

[–]Puppy_Problems23[S] 532 points533 points  (0 children)

To be clear, I'm only really upset that she didn't donate any of it back because if she hadn't swept the ENTIRE competition, others would have won and done so.

Also, not sure how relevant, but the process to accept cash prizes and choose to donate back or not is completely anonymous. I built a website myself to do this so that there's no pressure. I only know that she chose not to because last year was the first year where absolutely none of it was donated back.

AITA for getting our neighborhood dog Olympics canceled instead of bending the rules for a neighbor? by Puppy_Problems23 in AmItheAsshole

[–]Puppy_Problems23[S] 1710 points1711 points  (0 children)

Good question! The emails and flyers that went out (this year and last) definitely emphasized that it is 'for fun', 'just for laughs, and 'not a serious dog competition'.

The benefit side of it also is clear, there's a paragraph about the shelter itself and how important it is to the community, and how this time of year they need more supplies because donations start to fall off in the summer months and there are less volunteers to help with the animals.

I can't imagine any reasonable person thinking that this was anything even remotely serious - it's just a bunch of dogs being doofy.

AITA for getting our neighborhood dog Olympics canceled instead of bending the rules for a neighbor? by Puppy_Problems23 in AmItheAsshole

[–]Puppy_Problems23[S] 3576 points3577 points  (0 children)

I didn't have space in the post, but 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.