Dad Of 6-Month-Old Baby Fires Babysitter & Only Pays Her Half After She Brings Her Dog Over Without Permission
She says she did nothing wrong, but he says he put his baby in danger.
LovelyColorPhoto/Shutterstock.com Not everybody is a dog lover, and not everyone trusts another person's dog, no matter how sweet they may be.
Count a dad on Reddit among those who feel that way.
Posting in the "r/AmITheA--hole" (AITA) subReddit, he described how he and his wife got into a major conflict with their child's babysitter because of her dog.
In his post, the dad described how the situation went down.
The dad was outraged when his new baby's babysitter brought over her dog without asking.
The dad and his wife had good experiences with the babysitter, a young college student who lives in their neighborhood, in the past.
So they hired her for a recent date night to care for their six-month-old baby.
The dad writes that he and his wife have two cameras in their house so they can check on their baby when they're gone, and that the babysitter knew about the cameras.
While they were at dinner with friends, his wife got a notification on her phone that there was movement in their baby's play area, where one of the cameras is mounted, so they checked in on the footage.
The dad and his wife saw a dog sniffing their infant son when they checked the camera footage.
"We are both like WTF," he writes of the moment he and his wife saw the dog, because "we don't own any dogs and have no plans to ever own any dogs."
They then called the babysitter, but she didn't answer. So, thinking something might be wrong, they rushed home to investigate.
"We go inside," he writes, "and the babysitter is holding our son and there is a golden retriever just hanging out. Everyone is calm and fine."
The babysitter seemed shocked that they'd come home early, and when asked why the dog was there, she replied simply that she decided to bring him along.
She assured the dad and his wife that the dog was kid-friendly and very sweet.
The dad fired the babysitter and refused to pay her the full amount agreed upon.
"I don't want my son around dogs at such a young age," he writes, and he became angrier and angrier the more the babysitter seemed not to understand.
He explained that "this was not something she was transparent about and if we knew the dog was going to be there, I would have never okayed it."
He asked her to leave and informed her they would not be hiring her ever again. He also only paid her half of the rate they'd agreed on, because he and his wife were only gone half the time they'd scheduled.
The babysitter demanded her full pay, but the refused, telling her that she "put my kid in danger."
But the babysitter's insistence that she did nothing wrong made the dad question whether he had done the right things.,
Most Reddit commenters agreed that the babysitter should not have brought the dog with her.
Some felt it was shady that she didn't ask beforehand. One user commented, "if she thought it was no big deal then why didn't you see the dog arrive when she did before you left?"
Others were confused as to how she got the dog there in the first place, since she was caring for a baby at the time.
One user wondered, "Was the dog hiding around the corner? Did someone drop the dog off? did the sitter leave to pick up their dog? Who knows?"
"But I can't think of a single above-board reason that a dog just showed up without the parents knowing."
Experts like Cesar Milan say introducing dogs to babies is something that must be done carefully.
As seen in the video below, Milan recommends dogs and babies be distanced from each other at first, so that the dog knows to be "respectful."
And of course, both dogs and babies tend to be unpredictable, as another commenter pointed out. "Babies that young tend to be grabby and hit things, that's how they explore things."
"What if the baby did that? Would the dog bite?... She brought a dog into someone else's home and around their baby without permission, I wouldn't trust her with any of those things either."
John Sundholm is a news and entertainment writer who covers pop culture, social justice and human interest topics.