Bringing your dog to view a house? Don't leave evidence behind

A pretty gross photo showed up on Facebook this week from a Calgary realtor.

It was the carpet in a room at one of her listings. Another realtor brought clients to see the home and they brought their dog, which left something behind.

The prospective buyers were obviously not keeping track of the dog and looks like the other realtor didn't go around and make sure everything was left the way they found it.

It spawned a rather lengthy thread where naturally the consensus was: what the fudge!

Turns out the showing realtor was horrified when confronted and paid for the carpet to be cleaned.

There's only been a couple of times that I've had people show up an an open house with their pets. They've both been pocket dogs that stayed in their owner's arms the entire time. I know this because I followed them around the house to make sure the dog wasn't let down to lift its leg on a lamp.

If you must bring your dog with you for whatever reason I found this common sense practice  on a Houzz discussion. Do this:

However, what if husband and wife love the home and want to view it together to discuss options. Maybe they both viewed the home individualy already while the dog stayed outside with the other person.

When we were looking, if my husband and I happened to be driving around with the dog and saw an open house, we would leave the dog in the car or if it was hot, one of us would stay outside with the dog, while the other looked.

I've offered to hang out with dogs in the front yard when people out walking their buddy have stumbled across my open house and wanted to take a peek. So far no one has taken me up on the offer.

Service dogs are another story. As someone pointed out on thread they are always well trained/behaved.  I've never had that anyone bring their service dog to a listing either. Aren't service dogs always Labs? Labs are cool.

I read recently that someone wanted to bring their service chicken on a plane with them. Wonder what I would do if that ever happened at an open house. I would offer to hold the chicken for them I guess.

I'd write a blog about that for sure.