Watching someone make bad decisions about their pet is one of the more helpless feelings a friend can experience, especially when the pet is 80 pounds and getting more aggressive by the week.

A man watched his friend adopt a large, reactive dog in the middle of a grief spiral, skip the training, avoid the neutering conversation for months, and nearly talk himself out of it entirely while the dog snapped at cats and charged other dogs on a regular basis.

He argued, he advocated, and he eventually paid for the surgery himself.

After months of fighting, the friend finally agreed, but the drama didn’t end there.

Keep reading for the full story.

AITAH for arguing with my friend over neutering his dog

I’m 26 male and my friend is 22 male.

A year ago he adopted an Australian Shepherd Husky puppy — a poor decision he made because he lost his cat and spiraled severely hard after.

The reality quickly hits, and the friend’s bad habits only make it worse.

Almost immediately after adopting the dog, we learned he has pretty bad behavior issues.

The way he treated him and trained him was not great, and his behavior only got worse.

The older he got, the more reactive he became — he never improved his listening, recall, or behavior at all.

Now that the dog is bigger, it’s caused even bigger problems.

He’s almost 80 pounds now and he still jumps on everyone, runs over other dogs, gets aggressive with dogs, and has been awful for months.

My friend was set on waiting until he turned a year old to think about neutering him, and I thought that was okay and understandable.

But it soon becomes clear that the friend can’t wait much longer.

But the worse his behavior got — the amount of times he snapped at his cats, or had really bad aggressive days with other dogs — the more I thought getting him fixed as soon as possible was best.

My friend kept avoiding the conversations, shutting them down, and getting annoyed or irritated about even discussing it at all.

There seemed to be no sense of urgency on the friend’s part.

Even though it couldn’t be avoided, and the longer we waited the worse it would get.

For months he kept avoiding it, putting it off, throwing fits any time me or his mom would try talking to him about it.

Then he started talking about not even getting him neutered — and that was making me furious.

He’s starting to feel like his friend is completely neglecting his responsibilities as a pet owner.

The dog’s behavior couldn’t get any worse, and he just refused to talk about something that is one of the most common and normal things pet owners do.

He kept acting like it was the worst topic ever created, and was considering letting his testosterone and aggressive dominance behavior get even worse.

I was completely on the side of neutering.

He kept pleading his case with his friend.

I kept defending it, kept trying to talk about it with him, and tried to help him be less worried about the results.

I even paid for it, because he has no job and owns three animals.

But I was completely on the side of getting him fixed while he was leaning toward not doing it, and it ticked me off so bad that I got angry and annoyed with him about it for months.

So finally the friend agreed, but the drama didn’t stop there.

Two months after he turned a year old, he finally did it — against his preference, but because his mom told him he had to.

He still thinks he didn’t have to do it, and that it won’t get better, after barely a week.

I feel like an AH for being one of the people so sure it was what’s best for him that I argued with him about it and thought he was being kind of ridiculous and irresponsible.

AITA?

Sounds like this man saw something unjust and spoke up about it.

If you enjoyed this story, check out this post about a man who was totally humiliated when he learned the real reason his friends had ditched him.

What did Reddit have to say?

This dog definitely needs a lot more training.

This friend clearly didn’t do his research when it came to choosing a dog breed.

Cats and dogs require radically different types of care.

Neutering is a must for dogs this size.

At the end of the day, this man stepped up to do something his friend was either too lazy or cowardly to do.

He absorbed the meltdowns, kept having the conversation nobody wanted to have, and then opened his own wallet to get it done. His friend had no job, three animals, and apparently no urgency about any of it — and still had the nerve to act like the whole thing was unnecessary.

He may never get a “thank you” for it, but it was still worth it to do the right thing.