Has anybody ever heard of such?

Enabling is not a cure

biku324, you wrote about enabling.

Years ago I was trying to help an alcoholic.
I had driven her to a month long in resident recovery/treatment facility.
She came out and stayed sober for less than a week.
She finally got picked up for DUI.
She was passed out drunk in the car.
I got the call for Bail Bond.
Went to the County Jail where she was being held.
I refused to pay her Bail.
Her mother also refused to pay.
Bail Bondsman also refused, when I would not pay his fee.
Bondsman - "You don't think she will show up for court?"
Me - "I know if they have her she will show up SOBER!"

Told the Deputies that I was sure they had seen situations where a family
would finally give up on helping an alcoholic or common drunk.

"You now have another one."

Apparently this burnt the bridge.
I never saw that alcoholic again.

Bekeart
 
venomballistics said:
You need a frank and honest angle on this.
Puppy mill and door mat.
She's running a puppy mill on your dime and could care less what it costs you if the hammer falls on this under your watch.
As you are beginning to understand, your situation is starting to go sideways. The full sideways potential is orders of magnitude greater than what you are currently experiencing.
Her antics can cost you everything
Click to expand...

Hadn't thought of that, an interesting angle.

Wonder what would happen if the homeowner called animal control and told them of the SIL activities. As the puppies go so goes she?

Admittedly risky, and unnecessary if the homeowner put his foot down unilaterally.
 
Melvin Belli wrote a book on divorce and remarriage, a topic he was very familiar with, he was just behind Henry VIII. One of his categories was the
"My family comes first divorce."
 
Concur

I wholeheartedly concur with the good opinion expressed of RWSmith here on our forum family.

It is maybe a little early in this process for RW to entertain such disastrous possibilities, especially as we know his wife is not the problem, it is the SIL.
However, most men, who "get taken" in a divorce, suffer ruinous loss because they do not prepare for the worst while there is still time.
You don't want to think ill of any person, especially her, but protect yourself.
"She would never do that to me," you think, but still protect yourself.
You do not need to be resigned to the worst that can happen to be prepared for it.

If you are willing to be trampled upon, which is unusual, you will deserve my admiration. I have seen many men do it for God's sake through the years.
It is hard.
Don't complain though. Keep it between you and God.

Best Regards!
BrianD
 
I don’t mean to diminish this situation; but, the results are always perfect for the choices we make. Doing nothing is a choice. Time for a crucial conversation.
 
rwsmith said:
My SIL is getting a divorce and 10 months ago she and her daughter moved in with us, bringing 3 German Shepherds and a Rottweiller and 2 cats (in a cage). (We have one little dog) They AIN'T well behaved animals. After a few months one of the females came up pregnant and ended up delivering about 11 surviving puppies. It was a filthy, noisy mess for months. They are AKC registered but getting people to buy them was slow going and even after 6 months 2 of them ended up staying here, bringing the dog count to 6. Well, New Years Day rolls around and the mother dog started delivering more puppies. (nobody knew she was pregnant. My SIL is SUPPOSED to be an animal 'expert') ….back to the puppies. By midday we had 6 and thought that was it. By late afternoon we had 11 surviving puppies. That brings the total of foreign dogs in our house to 16.
Click to expand...

rwsmith, I’m a little confused. First, are ALL these “pets” living inside your house now? I mean Rottweilers and German Shepherds are large animals, and by my count, you have 4 large adult dogs, 2 around 6 month old large breed “puppies”, 11 “days old” puppies, 2 caged cats, and your poor little dog. Are the cats caged basically all the time? How is your little dog coping with this situation? Does your SIL and her daughter work and contribute money to you and your wife? Do you have neighbors and a fenced in yard? I would hope you can let the dogs outside in a fenced in yard at least some of the time, to keep your home from being destroyed. Of course, if you have neighbors, I would expect unruly animals to bark, dig, “play”, maybe making them unhappy with you.

You are definitely in a tough position and I hope that you and your wife can make decisions to get y’all’s life back to normal!
Larry
 
My mom used to say, "Relatives are like fish. After three days they start to stink." You can just imagine what it would be like after ten months.

Okay, now after all these posts sharing opinions, giving advice and counsel, I, for one, am interested in finding out what rwsmith decides to do, if anything. And, if he does choose some action, I sure would like to hear the results. Wishing him the very best out of an uncomfortable situation.

Please keep us informed, rw.
 
Last edited:
How it is..

boykinlp said:
rwsmith, I’m a little confused. First, are ALL these “pets” living inside your house now? I mean Rottweilers and German Shepherds are large animals, and by my count, you have 4 large adult dogs, 2 around 6 month old large breed “puppies”, 11 “days old” puppies, 2 caged cats, and your poor little dog. Are the cats caged basically all the time? How is your little dog coping with this situation? Does your SIL and her daughter work and contribute money to you and your wife? Do you have neighbors and a fenced in yard? I would hope you can let the dogs outside in a fenced in yard at least some of the time, to keep your home from being destroyed. Of course, if you have neighbors, I would expect unruly animals to bark, dig, “play”, maybe making them unhappy with you.

You are definitely in a tough position and I hope that you and your wife can make decisions to get y’all’s life back to normal!
Larry
Click to expand...

Yes, they are in the house, but they run in and out and dig up the yard. The two original 'puppies' are about 8 months old now and are almost full grown. A couple of the adult dogs are well over 100 Lb.

The cats stay in the cage, but are let out a couple times a day when the dogs are out.

No, they don't work. If they get any money it has gone into animal care. She had nine horses, she couldn't give away and as many dogs at the ranch. Some of the dogs are still there. They 'tried' to get jobs (apparently not very hard) and ended up doing 'Door Dash'. They'd be gone for a couple of hours and come back with $20 on a good day. And that doesn't work because when they are gone, my wife has to ride herd on the animals to try to keep them in line. They ain't 'well behaved'. I help with the big dogs when needed, but I don't mess with the small puppies. Funny thing is, when everybody else is gone except me the dogs are generally good because I don't jump every time they twitch and bark. They do have their property from her marriage to sell, but the way they are going I don't think it's going to sell until after the divorce, slated for probably February. The SIL deserves part of her soon-to-be-ex-husband's pension, but he pretty much abandoned them with nothing expect expenses and debts.

Our dog (11 years old) doesn't like the situation and especially doesn't like the grown 'puppies' that get in her face and want to play.

Yes, our yard is fenced, but the back yard looks like the Gobi desert with huge holes.

That's pretty much where we are. We've come this far. I was already fit to be tied, but the new batch of puppies pushed me over the edge. I'll try not belabor the issue, but I'll update until this gets resolved.

Oh, I should add that I don't have a problem with the daughter. She cooks and cleans and only has one dog and the cats that she takes good care of. She's stayed with us before when she was hiding from her abusive husband, no problems.

Thanks, that is what I am hoping for.
 
Last edited:
Thank you very much.....

venomballistics said:
And I think we can see the reason for the divorce before us.
Rwsmith is a member of significant stature in our circle here.
Sad fact here is he's likely looking at his own divorce before this is over.
His wife sees the family she came from right now, not the family her and her husband built.
She doesn't see that her sister is gleefully destroying everything she and rw pledged their lives to build.
Unfortunately this is a default setting with sisters.
I have three of them and I know they'd all destroy my life if I let them.
The goal is to try to protect our friend rw as best we can.
Ideally, we want to see his marriage preserved.
If that objective is not viable, he needs to beat them to the punch before all the resources have been squandered by the sil.
That said, the stakes are high and the road ahead is going to take all your driving skills
Click to expand...

Thank you very much for the well wishes. You have a very good handle on things.
 
I think all of the points have been belabored here, so RWS just venting sometimes helps and I hope it has in this instance.

You know we all work hard to create the life we want to live, and I know how frustrated I get when after all that work someone else' problems get dropped in my lap.

Whatever you do RWS in the end it will all work out. Good luck to you and God bless you for trying to help.
 
Thanks....

llowry61 said:
I think all of the points have been belabored here, so RWS just venting sometimes helps and I hope it has in this instance.

You know we all work hard to create the life we want to live, and I know how frustrated I get when after all that work someone else' problems get dropped in my lap.

Whatever you do RWS in the end it will all work out. Good luck to you and God bless you for trying to help.
Click to expand...

You right. I did feel better after venting. The second batch of puppies just pushed me over the edge. The year for the divorce is up in a few days. The lawyer said they wouldn't get a court date until they divided the property up. Considering the hostility, that seems not quite right to me. The husband pretty much abandoned her and has tried to give her the debts while he keeps the assets. He's a real piece of work, but then, so is she. I'm going to stick it out for a while. Maybe there is some light at the end of the tunnel that isn't an oncoming train.
 
Last edited:
rwsmith said:
You right. I did feel better after venting. The second batch of puppies just pushed me over the edge. The year for the divorce is up in a few days. The lawyer said they wouldn't get a court date until they divided the property up. Considering the hostility, that seems not quite right to me. The husband pretty much abandoned her and has tried to give her the debts while he keeps the assets. He's a real piece of work, but then, so is she. I'm going to stick it out for a while. Maybe there is some light at the end of the tunnel that isn't an oncoming train.
Click to expand...

As I often say of these things ... there are no saints.
The situation you have is the same one she created for him.
I can't say I wouldn't play my cards in similar fashion. I have a wife that I had to work on a bit before she saw how I was working to get both of us out of debit while pandering to her idiot niece would keep us in it. She herself has a quirk where if something breaks, everything becomes a crisis. A plumbing problem costing 300 can trigger a chain of drama including $2000 vet bills cause the cats didn't like having their space invaded by plumbers, so they must be sick and dying.
I sometimes have to stand on her hard about that to curb unnecessary loss. perhaps in some context of different perspectives, this makes me a bit of a monster in some version of the story. The niece no longer has carte blanche to get stoned as the rock of Gibraltar, total a ride, incur fines and judgements and get bailed out only to do it again next month. Some day, perhaps living her life in collections will get tiresome enough for her to change for the better. She had shovel enough to dig herself into it, she's got shovel enough to dig her way back out.
As sure as the sun shall rise in the East and set in the West, things are going to break. some you see coming, some you don't. either way, if you've planed well, you can cover most of it without much drama. I'm actually pretty good at this part. the missus ... not so much. with that, I'll return to researching coffee makers to avert the crisis looming over the kitchen counter.
 
Same problems, only different.....

venomballistics said:
As I often say of these things ... there are no saints.
The situation you have is the same one she created for him.
I can't say I wouldn't play my cards in similar fashion. I have a wife that I had to work on a bit before she saw how I was working to get both of us out of debit while pandering to her idiot niece would keep us in it. She herself has a quirk where if something breaks, everything becomes a crisis. A plumbing problem costing 300 can trigger a chain of drama including $2000 vet bills cause the cats didn't like having their space invaded by plumbers, so they must be sick and dying.
I sometimes have to stand on her hard about that to curb unnecessary loss. perhaps in some context of different perspectives, this makes me a bit of a monster in some version of the story. The niece no longer has carte blanche to get stoned as the rock of Gibraltar, total a ride, incur fines and judgements and get bailed out only to do it again next month. Some day, perhaps living her life in collections will get tiresome enough for her to change for the better. She had shovel enough to dig herself into it, she's got shovel enough to dig her way back out.
As sure as the sun shall rise in the East and set in the West, things are going to break. some you see coming, some you don't. either way, if you've planed well, you can cover most of it without much drama. I'm actually pretty good at this part. the missus ... not so much. with that, I'll return to researching coffee makers to avert the crisis looming over the kitchen counter.
Click to expand...

That sure is an interesting set of problems. We all have our quirks and faults. The SIL and husband were married for almost 40 years, both of them being terrible money managers. Missus Smiff and I have been married for 45 years, we both have our faults, but we've worn against each other so that we fit together pretty well. What has been an irritation has been amplified by the present situation. I look at it as something we need to work on, but we have to get past this first.
 
Last edited:
You must log in or register to reply here.

Similar threads

oldbrownhat
Pilot adopts kitten after flying animals to safety after hurricanes
Replies
7
Views
507
oldbrownhat
oldbrownhat
StrawHat
Please, meet Teddy
2 3 4
Replies
63
Views
3K
Birdgun
B
I
Pending demise or pending doom?
2 3 4
Replies
76
Views
3K
oldbrownhat
oldbrownhat
F
Young Brothers Massacre, A tactical expert opinion.
Replies
17
Views
2K
Timothy2700
T
5
light hearted reading...Ahhh, some good old fashioned family Christmas entetaiment
Replies
6
Views
329
Rudi
R

Latest posts

Back
Top