How To Deal With Your Roommate's Pet

By Danielle Wirsansky on February 1, 2017

Animals are cute. They can be soft. They can often even be cuddly. That is all good and well — animals and pets can be great. Is that not why many campuses have events during exam weeks where they bring service dogs to the colleges for students to play with so that they can decompress?

It is true that animals are great at helping you to de-stress from petting and playing with them. However, if you actually own the animal and have to take care of it, the experience can be a lot more stressful than anything else. In college especially it is difficult to juggle all your classes, work, homework, and social life with taking care of an animal as well.

Now, what if your roommate has a pet? There are two ways that this can go. Either it will be the nice, un-stressful route where your roommate takes full responsibility for their pet, cleaning up after it and taking care of it, and where the animal is completely well behaved. On the other hand, the animal might not be very well behaved and your roommate might not do such a good job taking care of and cleaning up after it.

Obviously, there is some middle ground here too. Regardless, you need to be prepared to handle any situation regarding animals in your home. Read on to learn how to deal with your roommate’s pet!

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Prior Approval of Pet

Before anyone brings an animal into your home, everyone living there needs to be okay with the idea of having an animal there. It is not anyone’s right to just pick up an animal and bring it into the home unless everyone is okay with it because, simply put, you all have to live there and you have all paid for the privilege of living there.

Their want of an animal should not and cannot be put above the wishes of the other people living in the shared space. If you return home from school one day to find your roommate has brought home a puppy, what are you supposed to do? Puppies are cute and all but they may not be something that you want in your life on a full-time basis right now. Puppies are loud, untrained, and sometimes destructive. If you are not okay with having an animal in your home, then your roommate should not bring one.

You need to make this clear from the very beginning before you even move in with your potential roommates. Are there certain pets you would feel comfortable having in the home? Are there some animals that would be a deal breaker? Make it clear with your roommate how you really feel and be firm about it. You cannot waver or change your mind.

Once you have laid out the expectations, you need to follow them as well. If you say you are okay with a cat but not a dog and then your roommate gets a cat, following your expectations, only for you to decide that you no longer feel comfortable with the decision — you put everyone in a difficult situation. This is also why you need to be upfront before an animal even enters the house because once it does, you are stuck with this animal there.

Animals are forever choices, not things to be discarded because you feel like it. Once the animal gets to your home, it should be there to stay. So make the rules really clear before any animal even steps foot in your house so that everyone feels comfortable living in the space, with or without animals.

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Take a Stand

This goes hand in hand with the previous point. You need to make sure that all pet rules are clearly laid out and approved by all roommates before an animal is adopted or brought into the home. If this policy is not followed, then you need to immediately make a stand before it is too late. You had an agreement and this roommate is reneging. That is not okay.

But say that everyone follows the rules initially but then things start to devolve. Your roommate gets really busy with school and is no longer taking as good of care of their pet as they promised you they would. The cat is scratching up the couch; the puppy is not as house trained as it should be; the bunny chews on the wallpaper.

Sure, sometimes pets can be unruly or a roommate makes a mistake. It happens. There are lapses sometimes and we should be understanding of them. But when it happens too often or rules are blatantly violated, that is not okay and you need to take a stand. If you let it happen again and again, too much before you complain, your roommate will think that behavior is fine and normalize it. They might stop realizing that they (or their pet) is doing something wrong.

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