Here is the issue…
Airbnb is a booking site, and they are responsible for bookings, not managing you property. We had a large log cabin 1300 miles away, and although we had excellent help to clean and take care of maintenance, I eventually found that it was difficult to manage that property in the manner it needed to be managed. We sold it and purchased a beach condo, closer to our home.
not to sound harsh, but you cannot be afraid of your guests, if you are going to self manage a property, I am a female as well, and my husband is a truck driver, so I am alone a lot, I address issues with guest all of the time, and I refuse to allow reviews hold me hostage. You can work with people in a firm yet respectful way, but always document conversations in a follow up message to the guests.
in this instance I would either call them or send them a message:
Hey guests,
I’m not sure if you are aware that our property is not a pet friendly home. I have been made aware that you have a dog on the property. The issue with this is that, as we advertise our property as NO PETS, future guests are expecting this to be the case, should they have allergies, this can cause an issue for them.
because you have had an animal in the property we will need to charge additional cleaning fees to mitigate the pet dander associated with the dog. The fee for this is $xx, I will send you a request for this via the Airbnb app, and will need you to accept this fee before you check out tomorrow. I appreciate your understanding in this matter, and hope that your stay has bred exceptional!
as far as additional guests go, I verify at initial reservation, I verify again about a week before, they are given 2 opportunities to provide guest count, if I find out that they have more, I charge them the per guest fee for over 2, if they are over my allowed number, which is 4 at both of my properties, I give them the option to have the guests over my allowed number leave, or the entire group must leave. I document this by sending a message on the app, I don’t tell them they have to leave I give them an option, and on the ONE occasion that this has happened the whole party left, and I was still paid for the stay. They did leave a poor review, that stated I kicked them out for a stupid reason. I called Airbnb and had the review removed. 1) I never kicked them out, I gave them options, 2) they broke house rules that they received messages on at least twice.
don’t be a hostage to your guests or reviews, and run your property like a business, keep emotions out of it and be factual and kind. And for god sake don’t expect Airbnb to run your business, they have all they can handle trying to run Airbnb, it isn’t there job to make sure all of your rules are followed, that’s on you.