Rossie Cottage, Auchterarder

Rossie Cottage sits right in the middle of Auchterarder, a few steps back from the long main street, and it turns out to be an easy place to arrive at with a dog. It is a whole house to yourselves rather than a room in a building shared with other guests, so there are no corridors to negotiate and no lift to wait for. You park, open your own front door, and the dog is in.

The garden is what dog owners keep coming back to. It runs in two tiers behind the cottage and is enclosed, which makes it useful for the short, unglamorous trips outside that punctuate any holiday with a dog. Guests travelling with pets describe it as somewhere their dog was happy to potter about in rather than a token strip of grass, and several mention how warm and comfortable the cottage was to come back into afterwards.

The host gets a mention in almost every review, dog owners included, and the tone is consistently that contact was easy and the welcome genuine. Guests arriving in December have found the cottage already decorated for Christmas. There is a restaurant and bar roughly thirty yards away, shops within a short walk, and Perthshire opens up quickly by car: Gleneagles is on the doorstep, and Stirling, Perth and Dunblane are all inside half an hour.

Two things to know before booking. The driveway is tight, and guests have found getting in and out of the parking space awkward with a larger car, so it is worth planning for if you are arriving with a big estate and a crate in the back. The outside space, while genuinely useful, is compact rather than sprawling, so a dog that needs real distance will be relying on the walks around the town rather than the garden. With a 4.6/5 paw rating, Rossie Cottage suits couples and small families who want a comfortable, central Perthshire base and have a dog that is happy in the car while the day is spent exploring.