Your golden retrievers should come before sister-in-law’s uninvited guests

Dear Miss Manners: In our retirement, my husband and I purchased a large, beautiful home in a famous desert resort area.

Naturally, our home has become a favorite destination for our family, which is wonderful! One of our goals was to create an oasis and a gathering place for our multigenerational family for festive occasions.

We also have three beau- tiful, well-trained golden retrievers. They are as much a part of our family as the humans, and everybody who comes to visit loves them.

At one large family gathering, with 12 relatives stay- ing in our house, my sister- in-law announced she had invited a college friend from 40 years earlier, plus the friend’s husband, to spend an entire day with us. They would join us for the planned celebratory lunch, dinner and festivities.

Then we were warned that the friend, despite being a licensed psychiatrist, has a deathly and obsessive terror of dogs. When she sees any dog, she becomes hysterical, jumps up on chairs, screams, etc.

We tried our best to accom- modate her, but it meant locking our golden retrievers — and this is their home as well as ours — in a spare bedroom for the entire day.

This uninvited guest was in our house from 10 a.m. until 10 p.m. — 12 hours. (She originally said she would stop over for just an hour or two.)

Another family gathering is coming up, and my sister-in-law has announced her friend will be coming again. This is not amena- ble to us. How do we get out of this without offend- ing everybody?

Gentle Reader: You may reasonably and justifiably say, “I am afraid that while we enjoyed meeting your friend, we simply cannot guarantee a safe environ- ment for her with the dogs. Perhaps we should meet at your home in the future.”

While it is true that Miss

Manners generally prioritizes the comfort of guests over animals, she makes a notable exception when the guest was never invited in the first place. If your sister-in-law objects, you might politely remind her of