How dare holiday lets discriminate against dogs when kids can run riot

As a dog mum, there is nothing I love more than spending time with my animals. I view being a pet owner as an incredible responsibility, and treat them as a member of my family.

If only everyone else saw things the same way.

This summer, my husband and I are looking to go on holiday with our two medium-sized dogs – and it’s proving impossible to find any nice accommodation that will allow us to stay.

It goes without saying that they are both house-trained, well-mannered and don’t bark for the sake of it.

Yet you’d assume I want to travel with a pair of wild coyotes given the response I get whenever I politely inquire if I can rent a pretty gite or cottage I fancy.

For whether it’s a full-blown holiday home or an apartment put on Airbnb for the weekend, people react with horror to the prospect of canine guests. Even ‘pet friendly’ places expect you to fork out £30 a dog per night, plus all sorts of other arbitrary fees for wear and tear as they attempt to cash in.

But arguably dogs are much less likely to cause damage than children are – and some properties even let them come for free!

All of which begs the question: should holiday homes that impose conditions on dogs also do the same on toddlers – or face being accused of being giant hypocrites?

Several years ago while working abroad, I rented out my Kew Gardens cottage in west London to a family with three children under five. When I returned, I discovered the cloakroom smelled of fresh paint. A further inspection revealed that the paint job hadn’t quite covered the scribbles on the wall. The ensuite loo no longer flushed (a plumber discovered Lego pieces trapped in the waste pipe), one of the windows was jammed shut, I spotted a stain on one carpet smelling faintly of wee in a guest room that had housed a cot – and on it went.

I know many other people who have experienced similar problems after allowing families with young children to stay in their homes. So why on earth should there be such blatant discrimination between a dog mum and a mum of tiny humans?

My eldest dog is a spaniel. He celebrated his 15th birthday a few months ago and doesn’t do much except snooze and go for a leisurely walk twice a day. The other is a fox terrier and, at ten, is usually glued to my husband’s side, only noticing me when I call him for our morning and evening walk.

As I work from home, they’ve never been the type of dogs to chew or destroy furniture out of boredom and are hardly likely to start now. In any event, I have crates for them to sleep in too.

So the chances of them wreaking havoc on somebody’s home are far less than the risk posed by a pack of rampaging toddlers.

I admit dogs can be messy creatures. In my 30s and 40s I routinely travelled with my two Old English sheep dogs. They each weighed 40 kilos and had a lot of hair. After a muddy or wet walk, guilty as charged, they would usually do a massive shake, spraying anything within a two-metre radius with water or mud.

But I would always anticipate this with lots of towels to avoid any damage being done and, despite their size, they were extremely well behaved. You don’t need to negotiate with a dog, or have to tell them twice to do something. I’d wager they had better manners and social skills than most children.

But because they had four paws instead of two chubby toddler legs and very sticky fingers, it meant I had to shell out a small fortune whenever I went on holiday – despite the questionable quality of the places that would let us stay.

There was the week in a tatty, rather poky Cornish cottage. A new-build Provencal house on an estate across the road from a supermarket, with a pool the size of a postage stamp. It was very definitely not the kind of rural property you dream of spending a sunny week in. As for being ‘dog friendly’, well, the garden wasn’t even fenced in.

And the situation now is even worse, with holiday homeowners subjecting pet-owners like me to a level of interrogation that would put the CIA to shame.

One host asked if I’d consider letting my beloved dogs sleep outside – what?! As for their helpful suggestions of camping… no thanks.

This doggy discrimination needs to stop. Or else, holiday home owners need to subject parents to the same level of scrutiny. Kiddy or canine house guests? I know which I’d pick.