Some pet-sitting favors come with hidden risks nobody bothers to mention until it’s too late.

One dog sitter found that out during a two-week stay with a friend’s dog, when the dog swallowed some small non-food items left out on a table, objects she never thought to hide since they didn’t seem remotely interesting to a dog.

She couldn’t reach her friend and didn’t want to risk more serious complications, so she took the dog straight to the emergency vet.

Now her friend expects her to cover the expensive bill and replace the swallowed items, only revealing afterward that the dog had a known history of eating non-food objects, information that was conveniently left out of any debrief.

Already being paid very little for the whole endeavor, she’s left wondering if she’s overreacting or if the real failure here was her friend’s silence.

Keep reading for the full story.

AITA for expecting the dog owner to pay for the vet bill

Recently dogsat a dog for a friend while she was travelling.

The dog swallowed some non-food objects that I honestly didn’t think would be interesting for a dog, so they weren’t hidden. They were on top of a small table and not on the floor.

The dogsitter was then forced to make health decisions for a pet that wasn’t her own.

Called the vet, and they recommended the items should be removed by giving the dog some medicine that would provoke vomiting.

I couldn’t reach my friend, and I didn’t want to risk a larger surgery or anything worse, so I took the dog to the vet.

Surprisingly, her friend treated this like it was the wrong decision.

My friend now expects me to pay the vet bill. It’s relatively very expensive (around 210 EUR), and I also need to replace the items that the dog ate.

She didn’t say anything about the dog eating non-food objects and that the dog had apparently done it before and that’s just how the dog is.

But from her point of view, she was simply doing what any good dogsitter would have done.

I was a bit surprised, to be honest. I took responsibility for the dog and had to make a decision about the dog’s health. The dog would probably have survived not going to the vet, but that seemed like quite a risk.

I babysat the dog for about two weeks with no payment other than a thank you and a small pack of sweets.

Now she’s questioning whether she really is at fault for this.

I can’t figure out if I’m overreacting and should have hidden all small objects. I’ve babysat other dogs many times before and never experienced anything like this. The dog is not a puppy, and the owner has a lot of things laying around the house, also on the floor.

The dog was also taken care of in an environment that the dog knows. The dog ate my earplugs. I looked away for a few seconds just after waking up and the earplugs were gone.

Anyone who’s ever had a pet knows an unexpected vet bill is nothing to play around about.

Redditors chime in with their thoughts.

Many reasonable dog owners would thank her instead of blame her.

This friend really should have disclosed this dog’s habit beforehand, especially if it was a well-documented trend of behavior.

This kind of behavior is, in fact, not normal.

Don’t even get this commenter started on the training aspect.

A pet sitter can only be as prepared as the information she’s given, and in this case, the most important piece of information was deliberately left out.

If you enjoyed this post, check out this story about a teenager whose family thinks she’s selfish for wanting to help plan her own sweet 16.

She approached the situation exactly as any responsible sitter would, keeping items out that seemed harmless based on experience, then acting decisively the moment real danger appeared.

Learning afterward that this exact scenario had already happened before, without ever being warned, reframes the entire situation as a failure of disclosure rather than a failure of care.

After two weeks of unpaid, attentive babysitting, being asked to absorb both the financial and emotional fallout of someone else’s omission isn’t a reasonable expectation. By any standards.