We normally get back to Denver, Colorado – where I grew up – once or twice a year. We try to go to the Great American Beer Festival every other year, and we usually go back around Christmas to visit my parents. This year we did not go to GABF (in part because of our trip to Alaska the month before), so it had been a year since I had last been home.

One of the challenges of both of us traveling together is what to do with our greyhounds. If we’re flying, there’s not really a choice: we board them with a friend in our local greyhound cult group. That gets kind of expensive, though, so if we’re driving and will be gone for more than a couple of days, we try to take our dogs with us. We almost always drive if the trip is eight hours or less and, even though Denver has pretty decent public transportation (for the US, anyway), it is nice to have a car here.

Traveling with our dogs means we have to find a dog-friendly hotel. Because of the size of our dogs, that can be a challenge. Most dog-friendly hotels have limits on the number, size, and/or weight (individual or combined) of the dogs. This is our third trip back with the dogs, and the third different hotel we’ve used.

Finding a dog-friendly hotel is a lot easier than it used to be, though. This year I used the website Bring Fido, which lists hotels that are pet-friendly and usually what kind of restrictions and costs the hotel imposes. They’ve been around since 2006, but I had never come across the site before, and this was the first time I have used them.

This trip we stayed at Staybridge Suites Denver South-Park Meadows. In addition to being I think the closest possible hotel to where my parents live (just over a half-mile away), the pet fee was only $15 per dog per night/maximum of $150, and the room rate was only about $79 per night. We are not exactly in compliance with their pet policy (maximum combined weight of 80 pounds), but they didn’t say anything when we checked in.

The room is nice and spacious, and it even has a kitchen with a full-sized refrigerator – something I didn’t realize when I booked the room. That is definitely an advantage for us, since we feed our dogs raw food that needs to remain frozen until we’re ready to use it. They also have a good breakfast buffet each morning, and have a dinner/happy hour a few nights a week – all included in the room price. The bed isn’t the most comfortable in the world, and the refrigerator makes a knocking noise every so often that sounds like someone is knocking on the door (thankfully our dogs don’t normally bark), but given all the other advantages this hotel has, I can put up with those fairly minor annoyances. We will likely stay here again.