The Hotel With a Mountain Guide for Your Dog: La Perla, Dolomites

Most grand hotels in the mountains will find your dog a bed. Hotel La Perla, in the village of Corvara in the Italian Dolomites, will find your dog a mountain guide. The hotel keeps its own hiking guide for guests, and when the guide heads out into the high pastures of Alta Badia in the morning, the dogs go too. It is a small detail, and it tells you everything about the place. This is a hotel that assumes the dog came for the same reason you did.

Walking Country

Corvara sits in a bowl of meadow under the pale towers of the Sella massif, in the part of South Tyrol where the signs come in three languages and the mountain huts are called ütia. The Dolomites are a World Heritage landscape, and from the village the paths run out in every direction, up through the larch woods and onto the high plateaus. There are hikes all around the hotel, the team is happy to suggest a route to suit the dog you have brought, and the guided walks take the guesswork out of a first day at altitude.

For a dog, this is about as good as the world gets. Cool air, running water, open grass, and a different smell every ten yards.

The Welcome

La Perla is a big timber chalet with flowers on every balcony, and it is entirely relaxed about four legged guests. There is no limit on size, so the mountain dog is as welcome as the terrier, and dogs are welcome almost everywhere in the house. Every dog gets a treat at check in. In the room there is a dog bed and food and water bowls waiting, and waste bags are provided.

Your dog may stay in the room while you head out, and housekeeping will not go in while the dog is there, which is the kind of thoughtful rule that only a hotel used to dogs comes up with. If you want a longer spell away, for the spa or a day on the high routes, the team can arrange a dog sitter. The hotel keeps an emergency vet's number to hand, and cats are welcome as well.

Dinner at the Bistrot

The dog comes to dinner. La Perla's Bistrot welcomes dogs in the evening, and in the morning you can take breakfast in the bar with the dog at your feet. The lounge and the bar are open to dogs all day. The exceptions are the breakfast room and the two fine dining rooms, La Stüa de Michil and Les Stües, which is a fair trade in a house with this much else on offer. In summer there is a garden where you can sit out together after a walk.

A Day Here With Your Dog

A few things to know before you set out, because the mountains have their own rules. In Italy dogs are kept on a lead in public and you must carry a muzzle with you. On the lifts, cable cars and buses of Alta Badia the muzzle goes on, so it is worth getting your dog used to one before the trip. The reward is that the lifts take you both up to the high ground in minutes, and the walking from the top stations is easy and wide open.

The valley looks after its dogs. All six of Alta Badia's villages have dog toilets and bag dispensers along the paths, and the tourist board publishes a guide to holidaying with a dog with a map. Two places are off limits in Corvara, the children's playgrounds and the area around the biotope lake.

For lunch, aim for a hut. The high plateau of Pralongià, above Corvara, is the classic day out, a broad grassy ridge with the whole of the Dolomites laid out around you, and the Pralongià mountain inn on top is one of the huts in the valley known for welcoming dogs, with a dog bar where they can have a drink. You eat in the sun. The dog sleeps under the bench. Then you walk down through the meadows to the village, and the Bistrot.

Why It Matters

Mountain hotels tend to treat a dog as a muddy inconvenience to be kept away from the good carpets. La Perla treats a dog as a walker. It gives them a bed, a treat, a seat at dinner and a guide, in the middle of some of the best walking on earth, and it charges forty euros a night for the privilege with no deposit. For a dog owner heading to the Dolomites, this is as good as it gets.

Read the official Roch Dog review or visit the hotel's website.