Photo Illustration by Taylor Shute

Finding a pet-friendly hotel isn’t the hassle it once was. A lot of hotels do accept pets. The gamble is, what will the room be like? Sometimes, it feels like pet owners are the new smokers. You can check in, but you’ll be sleeping in the smelly room across from the ice machine on the ground floor. In Sault Ste. Marie, Ont., for instance, our pet-friendly hotel room had tufts of fur on the pillowcase when I turned down the bedspread. I called the front desk to complain, and we got moved to a new room where our cat disappeared into a hole in the drywall behind the toilet.

So it was nice last week to check into a dog-friendly hotel that had none of these problems. Retired veterinarian Dr. Paula Terifaj owns and operates the DogSpa Resort and Wellness Center in Desert Hot Springs, Calif. The DogSpa isn’t a spa for dogs, as the name suggests, but rather a hotel where dogs of all sizes and breeds may stay unattended in the room, run in the private off-leash dog park or roam the main lounge while their humans eat breakfast. But what had enticed me there were the website photos. In one shot, a cute dog is paddling in the hotel pool. In another, a woman luxuriates with a glass of wine while a large hunting dog nuzzles her in the hot tub. Continue…