Who’s behind this
A dude and his dog who like to travel around the state. We go, we do.
I have been traveling Florida with a dog since 1993. Four dogs, a lot of cars, more beach parking lots than I could count, and thirty-plus years of finding out the hard way which “pet-friendly” places actually are. This site is what I wish I had been able to read before most of those trips.
A couple of days that turned into thirty years
I came down from Detroit in 1993 to take a one-year class in Winter Park. I have still never been to Winter Park. I pulled into Fort Lauderdale at 12:30 in the morning, planning to look at the ocean for a couple of days and then go to school. I saw the beach, and my whole life went a different direction overnight. I stayed four years.
Then Tampa, then St. Augustine, then Palatka, then Hastings, then back to St. Augustine. I have lived in South, Central and North Florida, oceanfront in Fort Lauderdale and St. Augustine, and on the rougher side of both Lauderdale and Putnam County. For a while I collected rent for a landlord whose claim to fame was owning seven or eight houses that had been featured on the TV show Cops. Somebody had to knock on those doors on the first of the month. That was me.
Along the way I have driven all the way around the state more times than I can count. For the record: East Coast beaches, West Coast sunsets, and East Coast attitude.
Four dogs, one state
Alister started it. He was with me from that first year in 1993 and lived all of it – Fort Lauderdale Beach, Tampa, Crescent Beach and St. Augustine. Alister taught me the basics: that a Florida beach is closed to dogs until proven otherwise, that asphalt in July will burn a paw, and that every retention pond has a resident.
Then came Cole, the one who changed my world. Cole went everywhere – the Keys, the Panhandle, the springs, the swamps, a long list of dog parks and every back road in between. If you look at the photos on this site, you are mostly looking at Cole’s trips. He is the reason the site exists at all.
Cheese came to us all the way from Hawaii. We toured him around Kauai before flying him home to Florida, which is its own story about airline pet policies. These days Cheese is off adventuring with someone else, and doing fine.
And now there is Ella Mae, who works two jobs. She rides along for this site, and she is also the stand-in for Elvis, the tour guide’s dog on our sister site, the St. Augustine Tourism Guide. Cole and Cheese are already on our shirts. Ella Mae is next.
You will also spot a supporting cast in the photos – Ozzy, Charlotte, Beauty, Bailey, Bentley and more – who came along on the days they could.
The rest of the household
Ella Mae shares the house with seven cats: Honey, Lex, Fish, Straight, Kinky, Checkers and Mabel. That is why this site is not only about dogs.
There is also Pierre, a peacock I raised from a baby. One day something attacked him, and he crawled home with a broken wing and a broken leg. He recovered in the chicken coop, and these days, if I leave the door open, he walks straight into the house like he pays rent. Most of the peacock photos on this site are Pierre.
And before all of that I farmed chickens, ducks and rabbits in North Florida. So when a page here talks about what a dog does around poultry, a Muscovy duck or a rabbit hutch, it is coming from someone who has kept dogs and poultry both.
Why this site exists
Most “pet-friendly” travel information is a filter checkbox rather than an answer.
A booking site will tell you a hotel allows pets. It will not tell you the fee is charged per night per dog, that the only relief area is across a four-lane road, or that the beach two blocks away is the one stretch in the county where dogs are banned. After thirty years of those surprises, I wanted one place that told the truth up front.
So we write it city by city and rule by rule: where dogs are actually allowed, what the rules really say, what the total cost comes to once the pet fee is added, and what Florida will throw at a dog that a visitor does not expect – the gators, the cane toads, the heat and the hurricane season.
Every photo is ours
There is no stock photography on this site. Every picture was taken on our own trips around Florida, with our own dogs, over three decades. When a photo shows habitat rather than the animal a page is about, the caption says so.
How we check what we publish
Every rule, fee and listing on this site was read at its source – the city ordinance, the county page, the park’s own rules, the hotel’s stated policy – and every directory is dated. Where we could not confirm something, we left it out. The full standard is on How we check, including the places we deliberately left off and the official pages we found to be wrong.
How the site is organized
Seventeen Florida cities each get a hub page and a set of guides beneath it: hotels, vacation rentals, restaurants, beaches and parks, and things to do. Statewide resources sit alongside them – the Florida dog beach directory, state parks with pets, the Florida wildlife and pets library, and pet help by county for the day something goes wrong.
How we pay for it
Affiliate commissions, advertising and our own shirts. None of it decides what gets listed – no business has ever paid to appear on this site. The affiliate disclosure sets out the details.
