Our dogs love coming to Brook Cottage. You can tell they are pretty comfortable sunning themselves in the back yard. They start to get excited as we approach Four Firs, where the road from the motorway crosses the B3180, because we usually stop to let them have a run on the common before we arrive in East Budleigh.

Devon means three walks a day. Because the holiday cottage has a gravelled yard at the back and a mostly paved front garden, we take them for a fifteen minute leg stretch down the lane first thing in the morning and last thing at night. The lane passes out of the village within a couple of hundred yards, and becomes a typical narrow Devon lane, with fields on either side behind high hedges. There is not much light polution, so on a clear night you get a wonderful view of the stars once you are out of the trees.

As well as these two short walks, we take them for a proper walk every day. There are commons all around. As you can see from the map, they run into one another, providing a vast space to explore. The Royal Marines have their barracks nearby, and the use the commons for training, so you might meet them. The dogs love them because they were once given some surplus sausages!

There are plenty of other places to explore: hills, woods, open fields and the coast path.

Also there are beaches. Our dogs love wide open spaces, and the big sandy expanses at Exmouth are heaven! Out of the main summer season, most of the local beaches are open to dogs, but many do not allow dogs during the summer. The Eastern end of the Exmouth beach however is open to dogs all year round.

Back at Brook Cottage, the dogs are not allowed upstairs, and they are not allowed on the furniture. Please keep to the same rules. There are stairs gates to shut them in the kitchen overnight if they might jump up onto the sofas. Alternatively, if yours is an outdoor dog, there is plenty of room in the garden shed. If you need to leave your dog during the day, the yard is safely walled all round, and you can leave the shed door open as a retreat if it comes on to rain.

The nearest supermarket, Tesco in Exmouth, stocks dog food, and there is a pet supplies shop in the Dinan Trading Estate nearby. There is a vet in Budleigh Salterton, and another near Exmouth Tesco, and contact details are in the welcome book that you will find when come to the cottage.