Brother-Sister bust up. What do I do?

You're in your 40's?

Jesus, this is something I'd expect from a 10 year old.

Her house, her rules, get over it.

Two children playing silly games over nothing at all when your mother need both of you being adults and acting together on her behalf.

Yeah, I'm with the other posters. This is kinda childish behavior. By you.

If you don't want to deal with her dogs, have her over, without her dogs. If she brings them anyway, then it's your turn to say, "My house, my rules." Because then it will be true.

Personally, I am a big-time dog lover, but sometimes you just don't want them in your face. However, there were other ways you could have handled things. For example, if the dog sits on the couch, and you don't want to, I'm sure there's an easy chair or some other place you can sit. Or haul over a chair from the kitchen. If 'everywhere' in the living room is where the dog sits, then that's absurd and over the top.

On her side of things, she could have them better trained, I suspect. A well-trained dog can be told to lay down elsewhere, or get into a crate, as told to by the owner. But the dogs are not going to be retrained overnight, and they certainly won't be if your sister isn't amenable to making any changes.

Dogs tend to respond to high excitement levels by matching and then exceeding them, so do your best not to behave in an overly enthused manner. Many of them will also respond to a firm tone of voice. You can potentially ask your sister, next time, for a few treats to give to the dogs and then only give them out when the dogs have sat a bit (you can't ask for a half an hour of sitting from a dog, but you can ask for a minute or so). If they don't know the sit command, then they aren't really trained at all. Sit is an extremely basic command.

Cesar Milan (The Dog Whisperer) is somewhat controversial but I absolutely agree with his maxim of 'exercise, disciple, then affection'. With a lot of dogs these days, the first two are skipped. That makes for bored, anxious dogs who act out, whether it's by chewing shoes long after their teething years are over, or pooping in the house, biting, jumping, or otherwise behaving inappropriately. Tired, well-trained dogs generally do not do this.

You can also tell your sister, "We need to concentrate on talking about Mom, and I'm having trouble doing that when the dogs are in my face all the time." Then either she should call them off or you both go elsewhere, leaving the dogs behind. Don't sulk when this happens! Sheesh! This is what you want to have happen. So go to a diner or to your home or whatever and get your discussion out of the way.

You didn't read the situation right. Your sister's dogs come before other people.

You should have moved that meeting somewhere else - like the local coffee shop.

Then you pouted, quite childish, and wanted an apology from her - which you didn't get.

Forget about this. Meet her in a neutral place after this and get to the business of taking care of mom.

Me and my sister have never got on so nowadays we just avoid each other, life's so much simpler that way..

Nuthin' wrong with that.

My dad and me never got on either and hardly spoke for the last 15 years of his life, he was a misery guts right to the end; i think amongst his last words to my mum were "When's he bleeding well going to get a job?"