The host's large dog attacked our small puppy in the house we rented

[Yekta1]

we rent a house  in Gold Coast, Australia, before booking I asked her we have a small puppy can I book your house, she immediately send me invitation link to book.

When we arrived at this house on the 28th of December 2019, the house owner had to touch our puppy and had to take her hand close to her dogs so that they’d understand not to attack him, so after watching this we asked her 3 times if it’s safe for us to bring our dog inside the house, cause every time we stepped a foot inside the house the dogs would start barking.

We still felt unsafe so we took our dog to dog care,  even though we didn’t have a dog when we came back we were still so frustrated by the dog barks that we ran straight to our rooms and we couldn’t even use the bathroom.

So the next morning we asked her to keep her dogs away from us but she still avoided us and did nothing.

Every night her dogs would run around the house barking with every small noise made, such that my daughter was so afraid she couldn’t even sleep.

For our new years celebration we brought our dog back so that we could have him with us and after new years celebration we went back to the house extremely afraid of her dogs, so we sent the owner a text message telling her to please put your dogs on a leash, and she responded that I’m not even home at the moment and the dogs are running wild for themselves.

The morning of January 1st our dog stepped outside the room to go outside and pee and the dogs ran after it, our daughter got scared of that and ran after our puppy and afterwards we heard a loud scream from outside the house and we ran after the noise, we saw our daughter surrounded by the 3 dogs and our small puppy bitten and our daughter was screaming non-stop “he bite him” and when I was looking at the big dog I saw spit dripping out of the dogs mouth

When we arrived to vet hospital they told us this procedure may need more than 1900$ and we called the owner and she responded that  it’s not my responsibility at all, we had to borrow 1000$ from our friend to deposit. our puppy was in critical condition for the first

our holiday was ruined, my 10 years old daughter traumatized, she cant sleep at nights at all.  she needs mental care. Has anyone else experienced this? 

[Anonymous]

@Yekta1  Very sorry to hear about your puppy's experience; I hope he has made a full recovery.

Did the listing that you book disclose the fact that there were dogs in the house?  If not, you would have been able to cancel your booking without penalty, as this is a very important disclosure. I think there's a good chance Airbnb would have also granted you an exemption to the cancellation policy if you'd reported that the dogs' behavior made your family feel unsafe.

But choosing to complete the stay rather than leave early generally means you accept it in the present conditions.  I can't begin to understand why you brought the puppy back into an environment that you believed to be dangerous, but it's very unfortunate that the inevitable occurred.

At a glance I don't see anything in Airbnb's terms that entitles a guest to monetary compensation for an injury suffered by their pet. Your primary recourse would have been to leave the property and get your money back, and that ship has sailed.

[Helen3]

I am sorry to hear about your experience @Yekta1  I hope the puppy has recovered.

Personally I wouldn't have stayed at the listing under these circumstances and would have asked Airbnb to cancel.

I am surprised knowing about the dogs, that you chose to let the puppy go outside by itself to go to the toilet rather than one of the adults taking the puppy out.

If you don't have pet insurance for your puppy you maybe able to make a claim on Airbnb's host liability insurance for their homes, however I don't know if pets are covered you would need to check the policy on the Airbnb liability policy on Airbnb Help/call Airbnb.