rSlash - r/AmITheA**hole for Having My Dogs Attack My Neighbor's Kids?

Episode Date: September 14, 2021

r/AmITheA**hole OP lives next to a couple of young boys and their hands-off, entitled parents. The boys are constantly messing around on OP's property, and he even catches them trying to break into hi...s house! Eventually, OP gets sick of the harassment and gives his dogs a command to chase the boys. The kids run away in terror and OP calls his dogs back -- no harm done. Does this make him the butthole? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript
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Starting point is 00:00:00 Welcome to R-slash, a podcast where I read the best post from across Reddit. Today's subreddit is R-slash Am I the Butthole, where OP unleashes his attack dogs against the neighborhood kids? Am I the Butthole for potentially traumatizing my neighbor's kids after they kept coming onto my property and trying to get into my house? Me and my fiance have lived in this house for a few months now. I have a one-year-old son myself, so I know how kids can be. However, my neighbors have three kids, a nine, twelve, and fourteen year old, and all of them are boys. At first they weren't too much trouble. I would just see them running around, throwing sticks and riding scooters across the street. But as of recently, they started getting a lot
Starting point is 00:00:41 closer to my property. This all started with the oldest one throwing various trash in our yard that my fiance would continually have to pick up. Then all three kids started digging holes in our yard, banging on the door, and I even caught them trying to lock pick my front door with a bobby pin. This has happened four or five times already. Of course I brought this up to their mother, who's done little about it. They seem to have very little supervision, and apparently child protective services has already been called numerous times because of how often they seem to be left alone. I've worn the mother that we have two big dogs, whose sole purpose was to protect against intruders.
Starting point is 00:01:17 So, if their sons happened to actually get into my house, they would probably end up hurt. I don't want these little kids to end up hurt, of course, which is why I was warning her. She brushed it off, saying that if anything happened to her boys, she would have me promptly arrested and my dogs put down. So, I decided to take matters into my own hands to ensure the safety of these boys. As expected, the older one and his brothers were sneaking around in my yard again. I waited until they got closer to the front door. When the second youngest opened the door, I said a command to my dogs, and they immediately ran out, barking and growling. All the boys screamed and started yelling. They ran all the way back to their house, getting wet by
Starting point is 00:01:57 the lawn sprinklers on the way. I called my dogs back. They stopped at the end of the lawn like I trained them too, and we didn't hear much for a few days. Then their mother and the police came knocking at the door. She set some stuff about how my dogs bit her kids, and I was a danger to the neighborhood. But I showed the security footage from my camera to the cops, and it pretty much died down from there. She's still trying to keep the case open, but I feel like I've done little to nothing wrong. Her boys don't bother us anymore, and her kids aren't hurt, and they're not going to be. Am I the butthole? OP, you did what exactly? Let your train dogs run around in your backyard, let them bark at kids, protect your house and your property, prevent young kids from getting bit. Wow, what
Starting point is 00:02:41 a criminal OP. Nah OP, I'm giving you 0 out of 5 buttholes. If their mother isn't going to be apparent to these boys, then I guess that falls to you. Though, maybe the next time those kids come onto your property, just skip the theatrics and call the cops. Anyways, OP you get 0 out of 5 buttholes. The kids get 1 out of 5 buttholes, and the mother gets 3.5 out of 5 buttholes. Am I the butthole for refusing to give up my dream wedding dress, even though it means that my fiance's family won't attend? I'm in a lot of turmoil right now, and it feels like everything is falling apart. I've never had a great relationship with my future mother-in-law. It isn't terrible,
Starting point is 00:03:20 but I can sense that she doesn't like me. My fiance is very close to his family, so there's been some tension. I didn't invite my mother-in-law wedding dress shopping because our relationship is awkward, but I thought that I'd show her a picture to make her feel included. My dress is a beautiful, flowy beachy dress, but not technically a wedding dress and could be ordered in color.
Starting point is 00:03:40 I bought it from a small local boutique that we both love. My mother-in-law said that I can't wear that dress because she bought the same one for her 50th birthday party, which is two weeks after my wedding. My mother-in-law has the dress in a mint-green color, and she has a receipt to prove that she got it first. Lavish birthday parties are a thing in our circles, so I know that she's invested some serious time and money in this party. I said that I'm so going to wear my dress, despite the fact that I could easily return it with no loss. Because I didn't
Starting point is 00:04:09 do this out of malice, and I love that dress. My mother-in-law said that if she wears her dress two weeks after I do, everyone is going to think she's pathetic and copying her son's wife. I said, sorry, but not really my problem. Everyone's gone crazy since I said that. My fiance's entire side of the family and their friends, my mother-in-law, invited have all backed out of the wedding. It's like 15 people, so it will be noticeable. His sisters were supposed to be in the wedding party
Starting point is 00:04:37 on his side, but they dropped out and have blocked him on everything. His stepdad won't talk to him and says that he regrets raising him because he isn't a real man, because a real man would stand up for his mom. Even his biological dad is on my mother-in-law's side, which doesn't surprise me because they're good friends. He called us up to shame us the other night. My fiance is hurting, and found out that his family had a big beach day, and they invited everyone except him.
Starting point is 00:05:05 He called his mother and they talked, but they didn't come to a resolution. She said that if I refused to do the right thing, the only answer is no one going to her party can also go to the wedding. He tried calling a sister-in-law and found out that she blocked him. My fiancee is mad at me now because he feels like his mom had the dress first. Alright, OP, honestly, this feels like an everyone sucks here situation. I don't understand why both you and your mother-in-law are digging your heels in so viciously over just a wedding dress.
Starting point is 00:05:35 Like yeah, a wedding dress is important, I get that. But is a wedding dress more important than your relationship with all of your in-laws and your fiancee's relationship with his family? No, obviously not. And on your mother-in-law's side, is her dress more important than her relationship with her own son and being able to attend her son's wedding? Also, of course not. You're both acting like petulant cry babies. So, let me clarify that your mother-in-law is acting much, much worse because she's the one who's escalating this way out of proportion. However, if I had something important to me and if I did it, then it would utterly destroy the relationship between my wife and her family, then obviously I
Starting point is 00:06:16 wouldn't do it. I mean, it would sting, I would hate to not do it, but I put my own wife's happiness and her bond with her family above, you know, whatever else is important to me. Certainly not some clothing, certainly not like a wedding dress, a wedding suit, whatever. It's just completely, completely out of proportion. OP, I'm giving you two out of five buttholes for putting a wedding dress over your fiance's happiness. I'm giving your mother-in-law four to five buttholes for being a completely unreasonable jerk. So I think the only way to get out of the situation
Starting point is 00:06:47 gracefully, which I don't think will ever happen because everyone involved in this story sounds kind of childish, is for both people to give up the dress. Like there's plenty of other dresses, that way you each have to make a sacrifice, you go out and find a different dress, and that way someone isn't winning over the other person, and it doesn't feel like one person will be bitter about it
Starting point is 00:07:06 but you know, if you both make the sacrifice then you're showing to the other person that like, hey, you are more important than this dress. So let's like put a behind us and move on, but I would be shocked if people in this story were able to reach that level of maturity and just move on. Or even better, if we're talking perfect world here, the ideal situation would be to everyone to realize that it's just a dress and move on. Or even better, if we're talking perfect world here, the ideal situation would be to everyone to realize that it's just a dress and move on wherever you want to wear. Am I the butthole for using some of my stepson's camp savings to buy replacement sneakers for my son? My son, Chris, had his 16th birthday a few weeks ago. His mom, my ex-wife, couldn't be with him due to work, but she sent him a pair of Adidas sneakers as a birthday gift.
Starting point is 00:07:46 Chris is a runner, and he enjoys running every day as a way to relieve stress and anxiety. My stepson, Jake, who's 17, saw the sneakers, and he said they looked like the ones at his favorite artist, Cain Brown, was wearing an music video, and he got so hung up on them. He was always asking Chris to see them and try them on.
Starting point is 00:08:05 Chris let him see the shoes but not wear them because Jake has bigger feet and he was worried that he might ruin them. Jake wanted to wear the sneakers in front of his friends but Chris didn't let him leave the house with them. Jake ended up sneaking out with the shoes a couple of times which made Chris hide the shoes from him since he kept taking them without permission. Jake was no longer able to sneak out wearing the sneakers, and he begged Chris to let him wear them out one last time to a party that his friends had.
Starting point is 00:08:32 Chris said no, and Jake somehow was able to locate the sneakers. But instead of going out with them, he cut them up with a hand pruner, and kept them in his room while Chris and I looked for them until his mom found them. Chris saw the damage and was upset. I grounded Jake and promised Chris to get a replacement, but when his mom called to tell me the sneakers are worth $600, I was in utter shock. I saw the receipt, and even then I couldn't believe it because $600 is way more than I can afford.
Starting point is 00:09:03 Chris's mom is a cardiologist, so she can afford this stuff. But I obviously can't. I was fuming! I let Jake know how much he messed up, and I told him I'll be replacing the sneakers using the money that he saved for his week-long summer camp. Jake had a meltdown and said that he was already punished, and it wasn't fair to punish him further. My wife thought that I exaggerated things, and talked about how important summer camp is for Jake and he's been waiting for it for months. I let her know that Chris' mom was rightfully upset that her gift for him got ruined and since Jake acted out of spite and malice then it's only fair that he would pay for the replacement. My wife assured me that if Jake knew those sneakers were so expensive,
Starting point is 00:09:45 then he never would have touched them. But that he thought that Chris wasn't letting him borrow them on purpose. What's done is done, and my decision is final. Both my wife and Jake are giving me the silent treatment and refusing to talk about it. My wife thinks it's crazy to spend $600 on new sneakers, and I agree, but they aren't mine so they need to be replaced. So am I the butthole? Okay, so when Jake is like, oh, but I'm already being punished, why do I need to replace it? That's not how any of this works. If someone steals a car, and then the cops catch them, and then they go to jail.
Starting point is 00:10:21 The cops still return the car, right? The guy can't be like, oh, well, I'm already in jail, you're punishing me, so why do I have to give the car back? That's not fair. There's two separate issues here. There's justice for Chris, which is replacing his sneakers, and there's justice for Jake, which in this case is like,
Starting point is 00:10:40 I don't know, I don't wanna say like evil justice. What's the word for this? Punishment, right? It's just punishment. Justice has a negative component. Like, when you punish criminals, that's justice. He's getting his justice here. So Chris needs justice. That's returning the sneakers.
Starting point is 00:10:55 And Jake needs justice. That's punishment. So his argument of like, ugh, but you already punished me. It's just stupid. And your wife trying to argue that spending $600 on shoes is stupid? Well, from Chris' perspective, maybe spending $600 on camp is stupid. Your wife is being completely biased here, OP.
Starting point is 00:11:13 If your wife thinks that it's so unfair that you take money from his camping trip, then she can pay to replace the shoes. Like, the punishment is beside the point. The punishment is like, step two or three. Step one is replacing the shoes. That's like the bare minimum. So these two trying to act like the punishment is enough, it's just completely entitled, biased, and unfair.
Starting point is 00:11:36 OP, I'm giving you a rock solid zero out of five buttholes. You did absolutely nothing wrong here. I'm giving Jake 2.5 out of five but holes and I'm giving your wife 2 out of 5 But holes as well. Also, I just want to add, I don't really buy the argument that Jake didn't know how expensive the Snakers are because if he saw these shoes in some music video, then I think the assumption that anyone would make, even if you know nothing about shoes, would be that whatever Anything the person is wearing the music video is probably pretty expensive, right? I mean, I don't know the first thing about shoes, but if I saw
Starting point is 00:12:09 a rapper or musician doing anything, I would just assume that every single thing they're wearing is at least like $500, right? That's a safe assumption. Am I the butthole for using my neighbor's trash can for my dog's poop? I take my dog for walks daily around my residential neighborhood. Normally, he does his business fairly early on, and I always dispose of it in a nearby trash bin. However, today, he decided to go a bit later into the walk. Given that there were no trash bins anywhere close by, I was resigned to holding onto his poop bag, tightly sealed in a plastic doodoo bag. That was, until I saw that one of the houses on the street that I was on had their garbage been located roughly halfway down their driveway off to the side. It was right out in the open
Starting point is 00:12:49 about ten feet from the sidewalk. Without thanking much of it, I walked into their driveway, opened the bin, and tossed the bag of poop inside. When I returned to the sidewalk, a man who had been walking nearby approached me. It turns out that he was the owner of the house and he did not look happy. He said, hey, don't ever do that again. Do you understand me? I was taken aback, not realizing that I might have done something wrong. People walk further on their properties
Starting point is 00:13:14 to deliver spam mail or solicit all the time and I hadn't considered that people might actually have a problem with what I did. Also, if it matters at all, these bins are public property and they belong to the city. I had no intention of being out of line, nor of causing a conflict. I simply said, okay, and went on my way. But the incident is sticking with me. I wouldn't have a problem if someone did the same thing to my bin if I chose to put it in that sort of location, but maybe that's just me. Plus, I keep my bins directly beside my house. That being said, I don't wanna be a sucky person or neighbor,
Starting point is 00:13:48 so please tell me, am I the butthole? Opie, as a fellow dog owner, I can safely tell you that yeah, you're the butthole here. When I pick up my dog's poop and put it in a poop bag, I keep it in a bin that is next to my trash can because I don't wanna put all those bags of poop in the trash can where they might rip and then just cook in the sealed heat of the trash can for weeks.
Starting point is 00:14:12 So suppose that you put the bag of poop in after the trash had already been picked up, then this guy wouldn't know about it so he would take this bin into his house. And like who cares if it's public property, he still takes it into his garage or wherever else. And then yeah, the bag of poop would just stink up the trash can for the whole week. As a matter of fact, my trash can is literally sitting in front of my garage right now instead of inside my garage because I had to just hose it out because something broke in there and it was really stinky. So, OP, yeah, you are being inconsiderate. Also, it doesn't matter if you walked one foot onto his property or a ten feet onto
Starting point is 00:14:47 his property or a hundred feet onto his property. The fact of the matter is that you walked onto this guy's property, which is rude and disrespectful. You can't compare you walking onto some guy's property with spam mail delivery, because that's the mail man just doing his job. And yeah, it is like solicitors, but no one likes solicitors. So, like, why would anyone want you to dump dog do on their property? OP, I'm giving you 1.5 out of five buttholes. Don't trust pass on people's property
Starting point is 00:15:16 and don't use other people's property as you're dumping ground for your dog's poop. Am I the butthole for refusing to walk my daughter down the aisle? I haven't spoken to my daughter, who's 26, in years. When she was 15, we found out that she wasn't my biological daughter, and my wife had cheated on me years ago with a friend. As it turns out, this so-called friend was suddenly interested in playing dad. My wife and I divorced, my daughter learned the truth, and I told her I still loved her no matter what. Of course, she was interested now in getting to know her biological father, and while at
Starting point is 00:15:51 her, I tried to accept that. She started pulling away from me after that. Even when trying to still do things together as a family, she was no longer interested. The last draw was when she was 20 and living at my house. We were arguing because she dropped out of her college courses, hadn't done anything in three months, and was mad because I told her she either had to go to school or work if she wants to stay here for free. She told me that I'm not her real dad, so stop pretending like I am, and she'll just
Starting point is 00:16:18 go stay with her real father. That broke me, honestly. But I told her, if that's how she really feels, then there's really nothing left to say between us. And she did move out to go live with him. I was depressed for a long time and drank so much. My son, who's 24, was my only reason to keep moving forward. For the first couple of years, I reached out to my daughter, but she wanted no contact,
Starting point is 00:16:43 so I learned to accept that and move on. Moving on helped me find more peace in my life. My son stopped talking to her for a while over this and was angry with her. They still chat sometimes, which doesn't bother me at all. Through my son, I learned that her biological father died in October 2019 and that she's engaged. My daughter reached out to me. First, she said that she knows that we haven't talked in a while,
Starting point is 00:17:06 but she wanted to ask me if I'd be willing to walk her down the aisle. After a pretty long message about how much she hurt me in the past with her actions, I told her no. She said that she didn't want me to be her father anymore, so I learned to no longer view her as my daughter. This turned into a fight between us, because according to her, it's not her fault that she wants to know her real dad. And I agree with her, it's not, but what IS her fault is how she treated me ever since. In my mind, I know that if her biological father hadn't passed, then we wouldn't even be speaking right now.
Starting point is 00:17:40 It ended with telling her that I hope she enjoys her wedding, but I want no part in her life. My son told me that she's ranching to my family that I'm ruining her day, and she thought parents are supposed to love their kids unconditionally. My brother seemed to think that I'm being a butthole, and this is my chance to be in our life again, but I have no interest in that. It still seems that everyone has a strong opinion on it that I'm making it difficult for my daughter to have the wedding she wants when it would mean a lot to her. My son is on my side, but the comments are still wearing me down, and just for the sake of my sanity,
Starting point is 00:18:14 am I being a butthole? Opie, I'm going to be honest with you, your daughter sounds like a real piece of work. If I found out that my father wasn't my real father, or my mother wasn't my real mother when I was 16, I definitely wouldn't cut them out of my life because I loved my parents when I was 16. I mean yeah sure, I would want to get to know my biological parents, but I wouldn't do that at the expense of the parents who raised me. So you put in 16 years of love, dedication, and support, and as soon as she finds out something that wasn't even your fault, it was your wife's fault, she's just like, well, thanks for nothing, Luzer. See ya, wouldn't want to
Starting point is 00:18:50 be ya. Based on this story, it doesn't really sound like she wants to get to know you or that she wants to build a relationship with you. What she really wants is just to use you as a prop for her wedding. So, no, Opie, I don't blame you at all. I have a sneaking suspicion that if you did go to her wedding, then she would just say, okay, well, bye and never talked you again. OP, I'm giving you 0 out of 5 buttholes. You're completely justified. I'm giving your daughter 4 out of 5 buttholes. Also, I'm giving your x, y, 5 out of 5 buttholes because in my opinion, so like cheating is already one of the worst things you could do to someone.
Starting point is 00:19:26 But on top of that, cheating with another guy and then getting pregnant and then passing off that child as belonging to the person that you cheated on is literally one of the worst things that a human being can do to another person. Because on top of just the baseline level of wrongness of cheating on someone and forcing them to raise someone else's child, what you're doing when you make that decision is you're jeopardizing the relationship that someone is building with their own child, at least the child they think is theirs. And this is exactly what happened to OP.
Starting point is 00:19:58 OP raised his child for 16 years, and the wife, through her actions, put OP in a situation where his relationship with his own daughter was destroyed. It's disgusting. It's absolutely disgusting. It's unforgivable. I think your wife genuinely deserves a 5 out of 5 butthole score because she's a real piece of human filth.
Starting point is 00:20:18 That was our slash of my the butthole, and if you liked this content, then be sure to follow my podcast because I put on new Reddit podcast episodes every single day. and if you like this content, then be sure to follow my podcast because I put on new Reddit podcast episodes every single day.

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