A holiday cottage with a secure dog paddock: what "secure" means at Chapel Hill

Anyone who has booked a "dog friendly cottage with enclosed garden" and then spent the first hour walking the fence line knows the problem. Enclosed means there is a boundary. It does not mean the boundary holds a determined spaniel. A gap under a gate, a low wall onto a lane, a hedge with a dog-sized hole at the bottom: all of these count as enclosed on a listing, and none of them lets you sit down with a cup of tea.

We built this place around that problem, because we are dog people and we have walked those fence lines ourselves. So rather than tell you it is secure, here is what is actually there.

Three boundaries between your dog and the road

The gates at the road. The entrance to the property is a pair of automated gates. They open for you when you arrive and they close behind you. Everything else is inside them.

The field gate. Inside the entrance, a field gate separates the stables and their ground from the rest of the property. Dogs go on the lead for the short walk across the driveway to it.

The paddock. Each stable has its own large enclosed grass paddock, fenced with wooden post and wire. The one your dogs run in is private to your booking. Nobody else's dog uses it while you are here, and if you take the whole place, both paddocks are yours for the whole stay.

So a dog that somehow got out of the paddock would still be inside the field gate, and a dog that got past that would still be inside the entrance gates. That layering is the whole point. One guest put it in a review as "the added security of the gated entrance", and that was before the paddocks were split.

What the paddock is for

Off-lead running, in a word. The paddock is grass, it is big enough for a proper run, and it is where the morning starts and the evening ends for most of our dogs. It is also where the ball goes, where the roll in the grass happens, and where a dog that has spent the day on a lead in the Forest gets to be a dog again.

Guests write about it more than anything else here. "Our dog loved the large enclosed space where he could run around safely and securely," wrote one. "It was perfect for our dog too who loved the dog paddock," wrote another. We quote them because they are not our words.

What the paddock is not

It is not the whole garden. Our own garden is ours, and it is not part of the dog's patch, partly because the robot mower lives there and some dogs take it very personally. The dog's ground is the paddock, the patio by the stable, and the lead walk down the drive and out to the lanes. We say this before you book rather than at the gate, because a dog-first place that springs its boundaries on you at arrival is not dog-first.

It is also not a place other dogs visit. This is our home, so our own dog lives here and family come with theirs, and we say that plainly too. None of them can get into the stables or into your paddock. If your dog does not like meeting strangers, tell us when you book and we will plan the arrival around it.

After the paddock: the wash station

The Forest of Dean is clay, old mine workings and ancient woodland, and in the wet months it is mud. So next to the paddocks there is a dog wash station: a stainless steel tub, shower hoses and a blow drier. It is free, and you can use it as often as you like. One guest whose dog never needed it still wrote that "we thought it was an excellent addition". The point is that mud is not a reason to skip the walk, and a wet dog is not a reason to worry about the sofa.

Two dogs, no fee

Two dogs per stable, free. Up to four if you take both stables as the whole place. There is no dog fee, no per-night charge and nothing added at the end. Each dog gets a welcome pack made up by name, with treats waiting on arrival, and each stable has a dog bed. Before you arrive we ask about every dog: their name, what they love, what they cannot have.

For the escape artists and the nervous ones

If you have a dog that treats fences as a challenge, tell us what you are dealing with and we will tell you honestly whether the paddock will hold them.

Open all year

The paddock does not close in November. Everything in the stables is on one level, the heating is oil-fired, and the wash station earns its keep most in the months when the Forest is at its quietest and muddiest. Enquiries are welcome for any dates.