The Farm Office

The Farm Office is a converted building on a working farm at Stoodleigh, in the hills north of Tiverton in mid-Devon. It is let as an entire house, comes with a hot tub, and sits in genuinely good scenery, with most of the county inside an hour's drive.

On paper the pet provision is strong. One dog stays free of charge, a second is accepted for a supplement, and there is an outdoor dog wash on site - a rarer facility than it sounds, and a useful one after a wet farm walk. Guests are asked to keep their own dogs on a lead around the grounds.

In practice the dog-owning feedback on record is more mixed than the property's general reviews suggest, and it is worth setting out plainly. The garden attached to the cottage is laid entirely in stone and shingle with no grass, and a visiting dog was reluctant to use it at all, which is a real problem when it is the only enclosed ground available. On the wider grounds, that same feedback describes the owners' own dogs running loose, with one of them growling at and chasing a leashed dog on a walk. It also records dog mess left on the grounds, and old food around the barbecue area that had to be kept away from the dog.

None of that makes the property unsuitable, and the cottage itself draws real praise for comfort, cleanliness, the welcome gifts and the farm walk. But it does mean the setting asks something of you: a dog unsettled by loose dogs approaching, or one that will not toilet on shingle, is likely to find this a harder stay than the facilities list implies.

Best suited to a confident, sociable dog and an owner comfortable on a working farm, who will check the current arrangement for the owners' own dogs before booking.