A good friend brings her dogs when she stays with me. I kind of dread it. What can I do? | Leading questions

A good friend of mine stays with me regularly when she comes into town. She brings her husband and two dogs that don’t get along with my dog. They’ve “used the bathroom” in our house before. I try to be nice and help clean or pretend it doesn’t bother me so that they feel comfortable. But when she asks for a weekend to come back with everyone, I kind of dread it. I enjoy seeing her and she’s a great friend. I think our friendship would be better if she stayed somewhere else, but I would feel bad if she stayed in a hotel and I don’t think she’d visit as often. She cleans up after the dogs and whatnot, but I like my home to be my safe haven. This friend doesn’t handle confrontation well, but is understanding. What can I do to handle this?

Eleanor says: It sounds as though you’re in the jam we all get into when we try to smooth things over: you can have the social ease of pretending something is fine; or the outcome from confessing it isn’t, but not both simultaneously.

Obviously, your friend should have paid more mind to the possibility that you don’t see her dogs like she does. Using the bathroom in your house? The first rule of society is that other people’s preferences might differ from yours, and that matters for how you treat them and their stuff.

But bring a dog into the equation and some otherwise intelligent people seem to forget that. They’ll trail behind on a leash giving the choreography of an apology while their dog puts paws on tables, bounds excitedly up to frightened children or treats furniture and food the way they’re allowed to at home. I’m saying this as a lifelong Dog Person, for what it’s worth: there is not a muddy paw print in the world I mind if it means I am playing with a dog. But we must admit, some dog people give the rest of us a bad name by assuming everyone sees their dog the way they do.

Your friend should have seen through the polite illusion of you helping to clean up. But she hasn’t. And in fairness, acting fine with it is precisely designed to downplay the disruption.

So do you want the appearance of frictionlessness, or do you want the outcome to change?

Sometimes we try to have both with a white lie: “Our dog’s sick! Yours had better stay away.” But fibs unravel or invite troubleshooting: “Oh no! We’ll come a different weekend instead.”

But ultimately, you can’t bear a burden invisibly and hope the person you’re concealing it from will realise, then take it away.

To some extent, enduring annoying things for our friends is part of the deal. We collect them from the airport in traffic and travel for their weddings and help them move and watch their kids and change plans to help them. We do these things because it’s what it is to be a friend, and because they’d do them for us. But key to those things is the friend’s awareness and gratitude that you did something annoying for their sake. If your friend doesn’t even recognise her dogs as disruptive – if she treats this as par for the course – then it might be time for the path of more friction.

What about something simple, halfway between the hotel and the full menagerie: “Would love to have you stay! I’m sorry to ask, but could this visit be without the dogs? Ours has been stressed out by having other animals in the house.”

Your friend should have realised you might not be as fine with this as you’re acting. But when someone doesn’t notice something they should have, you can either point it out or decide to live with it.

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