Anonymous wrote:Would your siblings listen to your parent that has allergies? I'd at least suggest to the sister who hasn't yet bought a dog that she should hold off for a few months and see if her child's condition improves. Then it's not like she can't ever have a dog, but she's just delaying it a bit.

And don't be overly dramatic about your siblings bringing their pets to family reunions. Take Zyrtec and suck it up for the few times that everyone is together. My husband does this and has never complained about it.

And of course, because your husband does it, everyone else should, too. Because everyone's allergies are exactly the same.

I have a friend who was in a similar situation. Very bad asthma and a sickly child/teen while living in her parents house who BRED dogs. She knew that it was the dogs that made her ill and so did her parents but they did nothing.

When she left home her asthma improved significantly. UNTIL she went home for a visit. For the first couple of years after she moved out she ended up in hospital with a severe asthma attack several times - each time after she visited her parents. Then it got so bad that EVERY time she visited them she'd end up in hospital. So, at the age of 22 she refused to ever visit her parents at home again, unless they got rid of the dogs.

They did not. She sees her parents outside of the house only and she hasn't had another severe asthma attack since. She thinks that living with the animals previously got her used to them and while she was constantly sick it was more of an every day thing than an emergency that would land her in hospital hooked up to machines.

Please push this with your family. Asthma is very serious and the last attack for my friend before she cut off all visits to her family almost killed her.