After a few hundred phone calls, you learn that fine print is a personality test the business is taking in public. A flat “no dog fee, no size limit” usually means the owner has a dog and the policy was written in one sentence. A $150 “pet cleaning fee” means dogs are tolerated as a revenue line. Neither is wrong — but only one of them is going to smile at your dog.

“Under 25 lbs only” at a hotel almost never has anything to do with the rooms — it’s about one incident in the lobby, years ago, that nobody remembers except the policy. It’s worth a phone call: half the time a calm big dog gets a yes when a human asks a human. “Two dogs max” is the opposite — that one’s real, it’s about noise, and arguing it burns the goodwill your next visit needs.

The line we always check: whether dogs can be left unattended in rooms. Not because you plan to — because a dinner reservation will eventually happen, and the answer changes your whole evening. It’s the single most-missed line in dog travel, and it’s on every listing we publish.