Following Through

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My husband and I had a situation back in January that I would like to share... My younger sister's unofficial boyfriend came up from Florida for the week to visit her. (It was my parents' Christmas present for my sister.) For the sake of this discussion, we will call his name Ben. While Ben was visiting for the weekend, my husband and I got to meet him in person. He is a really nice guy, and we all enjoyed getting know him. While he was staying at my parents' house, we found out he's an animal lover so we took our dog over to my parents' house the last night Ben was visiting to let them meet. To make a long story short, although our dog had never shown any aggression in the past whatsoever, he bit Ben. (We adopted our dog from a shelter two or three years ago when he was already full grown so we hadn't known him from a puppy, which is probably something we will never do again!) I felt so bad, and it was just a really sad situation. We have dealt with everything now, of course, but at the time there was still the issue of taking care of Ben. When he got home, he had to have some medical attention. Although by then we knew Ben well enough to know he was not the kind of person who would sue us (thank goodness!), we still wanted to do the right thing by him and take care of all of his medical bills. On top of everything, we found out he didn't have medical insurance. Let me pause a second to tell you that the reason my sister and Ben had met was because of my grandparents who know him from their hometown. (My sister lives here in Michigan, and Ben and my grandparents live in Florida.) So...you can probably guess what happened. My grandparents found out about the situation. Since they were also friends of Ben's parents, for some reason or another, my grandparents became embarrassed of the situation and all that had happened. My grandparents are the kind of people who are loaded and so they are used to using their money to turn the situation around. My husband and I had already been in communication with Ben so he knew we were taking care of all of his bills. All he had to do was tell us the amount, and the check would be in the mail that day. My grandma emailed me a few days after the incident and told me the total of the medical bills and that they wanted to take care of it right away. I told her we had already been in touch with Ben, and that we were taking care of the bill because we are honest people and want to handle it ourselves like responsible adults, of course. Being the way that my grandparents are, they insisted on paying for all of Ben's medical expenses anyway, regardless of what I told them NOT to do. It was unknown to us that they had already gone against what I said and paid the bills anyway until I received an email from my grandma that they had taken care of it and asked us to reimburse them the money. My husband and I were very upset, and I think we had a right to be! Not only did we NOT ask my grandparents for their help, they had nothing to do with the situation! Correct me if I'm wrong, but I think they completely overstepped their bounds. On top of everything that happened, it made my husband and I look really bad because it makes it look like we asked my grandparents to be the go-between and handle the situation for us as if we couldn't face what had happened. My grandma was even so kind as to send us copies of all the bills along with copies of the checks she had paid to Ben and the medical facility. So...here's what we did - after giving the situation a lot of thought, my husband and I agreed that we would send a check for the full amount directly to Ben. Since my grandparents didn't listen to me, I thought it would be the right thing for us to follow through with what we told everyone we were going to do. I also sent Ben an email explaining what had happened - that we asked my grandparents not to get involved, and that we were going to deal with Ben directly. My grandparents were upset and haven't communicated with us since (because I'm sure they were embarrassed by how we reacted to what they did), but I'm not afraid to step on toes when I know what they did was wrong and didn't mind letting them know. I guess the thing that makes me mad the most is that my grandparents acted as if we weren't going to follow through on what we said we would do. The sad part is that it was more embarrassing the way my grandparents felt they had to butt in than the fact that our dog had bit Ben in the first place! I think it was a situation that got completely out of hand because people stepped in when it wasn't any of their business. I tried to call my grandparents after I thought the whole situation had blown over to explain to them why we did what we did, but I only got hung up on. Can't say I didn't try to mend the relationship! Do you think we did the right thing? If you were in this situation, what would you do? Have you ever had a similar situation? How do you feel when people think something is their business when it's not?