Rules for Pets
First and foremost, we love animals! Dad and Terry really enjoy pets, but your faithful web-page designer is a real fanatic. My wife and I have four cats and don't see how we'd get by without them. So we try and make as many of our properties pet-friendly as we can (right now those properties are the Luxury Beach House, Pelican Roost, Matanzas, and the Mountain Chalet). We know the furry ones are most likely just other members of the family. Besides, everyone knows how much dogs love the ocean--it'd be cruel to leave them behind! I have to say right up front that, as much as we personally might love cats, so many folks have allergies these days that we can't allow them in any of our properties - sorry!!
At the same time, we have to preserve the cleanliness and pleasantness of each home for the next renter that stays with us, so we decided to post a page of general guidelines and procedures. We charge an extra 50% premium deposits for pets (so instead of $450 it is $750 with pets), but I think you'll agree that most of these guidelines are just common sense.
1) As much as possible, we'd ask that you keep your pets off the furniture. If you have an adorable lap-dog that wants to hop up on the couch while you watch some TV, that's fine! But we'd ask that the couch not become the "home away from home" for Fido. If nothing else, please just put a towel down so that the hair isn't a problem for the next renters.
2) Please, PLEASE keep your dogs dry when in the house. The worst thing that has happened to us is an episode last year when one of our condos smelled like wet dog for weeks. We wound up having to replace the furniture and carpets it was so bad. If you know your dogs have a terrible odor, please be honest with us about it. We will keep part or all of the deposit to pay for the extra cleaning.
3) If any accidents happen in the home (in the years that we've had them, I think our cats have yet to go 24 hours without one of them throwing up on our carpets) just let us know. Talk to anyone that's rented from us before and they'll tell you that we're never out to keep people's deposits. But it reflects very badly on us when renters try and hide a mess for the next group of renters to find. Besides, often we can come down to the home with cleaning supplies and take care of things right away.
4) St. Augustine is currently pretty pet-friendly. I say currently because there are always folks that are itching to remove from the beaches, town, the world, anything that they don't like. So we really need to ask you to help us keep the beaches pet-friendly! This means please follow some pretty common-sense rules, namely clean up after Fido and keep him on a leash when around others. Thanks!!
We've decided to limit the size of the dogs we accept to under 25 lbs, though contact us about this is you feel you have a particularly good-natured dog that's a bit larger. All the problems we've had in the past have involved large dogs and we found that this is a fairly standard rule of thumb in our industry. And there you go! Pretty self explanatory. We hope you and the furry ones will have a great time at the beach!