I hear what you're saying too, Vertigo - I think it wasn't so much that he wanted to address the dog issue, but that he assumed we don't care for him based on seeing our dog once in maybe the last 4 years. I took great personal offense to that - I'm not sure why it wounded me so much. I have increased our dog's grooming schedule over the last year due to his age and the results of decreased mobility from maybe once or twice per year to every 2-3 months. I brush him weekly now because he's blowing coat all summer long. There are a lot of factors going into why he wasn't perfectly groomed on our arrival, including the dog's age, our learning curve with his aging & the summer heat, a really unusual month prior with a lot of out of town travel, etc.

I am very sensitive to negative judgment anyway, but doubly so when I don't feel it's warranted. And it's a sore spot for me coming from him anyway, because I don't feel in general that he likes me very much. It's hard to try to make an effort to visit someone (because it's important to my mom that we do) and work really hard to make it as comfortable/non-intrusive as possible for him, and then to feel like I'm basically just being tolerated.