Name what actually changed while she was away
A spoiled stay is rarely mysterious once you list it. Grandparents typically feed earlier, share their own food from the plate, allow the sofa or the bed that is forbidden at home, walk at different times, and answer every hopeful look with something edible. Your dog has not become badly behaved — she has learned, accurately, that the rules in that house are generous. She comes home expecting the generous version of life to continue, and the transition is really about her discovering which house she is in now.
That framing matters, because it keeps the reset kind. She does not need correcting for behaviour she was praised and fed for last week.
Restart the home routine whole, from the first morning
Partial resets drag. From day one back, feed at home times and in the home place, keep the home rules about furniture, beds, and begging, and run walks at the usual hours. Dogs read consistency quickly: if the sofa is allowed on tired evenings but not others, she will test every evening; if it is simply not available, most dogs stop asking within days. Use management while she relearns — a closed bedroom door, food eaten out of reach of a hopeful chin, her own bed made more inviting with a chew at the times she used to migrate to the sofa.
Reward the behaviours you are reinstalling. When she settles on her own bed during your meal instead of patrolling the table, that is the moment a small treat of her own is genuinely earned.
Expect the specific tests, and outwait them
The testing follows the grandparent routine she misses. She may wait by the cupboard where treats live at the hour her other home produced them, wake you earlier because breakfast came earlier there, or stage a hopeful sit beside the armchair that used to pay out. Meet each test with the same calm non-event: redirect to the home activity for that hour, and do not negotiate. What usually breaks a reset is not the dog's persistence but the household's inconsistency — one person slipping her toast crust reopens the whole negotiation.
Weight is the other honest check. A long stay of extras can add visible condition, especially in an older or less active dog. Weigh her, and if she has gained, return to her normal measured food without adding compensating treats; ask your vet at the next visit if you are unsure what her healthy weight should look like now.
Talk to the grandparents before the next stay, not after it
This conversation goes best as gratitude plus a short, kind list, delivered well before the next holiday rather than in the doorway on collection. Most grandparents spoil a dog because spoiling is the pleasure of the role — so give them sanctioned ways to do it: the approved treats to hand out, the game she loves, the walk that is theirs together. Then name the two or three things that genuinely matter for her health or your household's sanity — measured meals, no cooked bones or rich scraps, the bed rule if sleep matters — and explain why, briefly, in terms of her rather than your rules.
A written routine they can keep on the fridge turns goodwill into something they can actually follow when she is looking at them hopefully.
When the wobble is more than spoiling
Most dogs are fully back in the home rhythm within a week. Pay more attention if the stay seems to have left something else behind: a dog who will not eat her normal food after days rather than hours, ongoing digestive upset, unusual clinginess or low mood that does not lift, or a cough or lethargy picked up anywhere new dogs gathered. Those deserve a vet conversation rather than more routine enforcement. For the ordinary spoiled-dog reset, the long-term fix is that same alignment, agreed in conversation — while Family Sharing on KinsLe lets relatives you select open her profile, so the grandparents who adore her are looking at her own profile before she next arrives for a stay.