Urban Ted went to the seaside this week. We visited a very dog friendly hotel. Teddy explored Watergate Bay in Cornwall and zipped about like a small hairy bullet, going berserk for all the sand, seagulls and smells.
We’ve only ever taken Teddy away to France before, where even the most upscale of hotels seem to be dog-friendly, but this was our first trip to a British dog-friendly hotel and I’m pleased to report that it was good. The Watergate Bay Hotel is perched just by the beach, and Teddy was allowed to accompany us around the hotel, meet the various other dogs lolling about the place and get waited on with the odd bowl of water.
Pre-dog, I’d have thought that a dog-friendly hotel might be full of the evidence, and not in a good way. But there was no chewed furniture, doggy smells, moulting hair. This is a spic and span place on the stylish side of simple. We did try and head to the smarter restaurant without Teddy (they have two places to eat, an informal one that you can take dogs into, a smarter one that you cannot) but as soon as we shut our bedroom door, our normally non-barking dog suddenly started howling. Although we had crated him with his familiar bits and pieces, it didn’t work. Eventually we retrieved him, probably teaching him in the process that howling = escape… something else to work on.
Maybe self-catering is the best option for longer stays away, but for a few nights it was unusually good to be able to take Teddy out to dinner with us. Clearly not so relaxing for Teddy as for us: we discovered that Teddy cannot lie or even sit down and relax. He considers it his job to be on permanent guard. Maybe it’s a feisty Schnauzer thing?
