The first two links I have for you this week highlight a couple of intrepid travelers-with-dogs: ohmidog‘s John Woestendiek is soldiering across the U.S. on a minimal budget with his dog Ace (I only came across the saga a few posts in, but it begins here), and filmmaker and journalist Allison Otto travels throughout the U.S. with her dog Cosette (Otto’s blog is Small Dog on the Go, and she was profiled this week on Take Paws).

This week also saw the release of three Top 10 lists — I’m not generally a huge fan of these lists, because it’s often hard to tell what criteria are being considered, but they always have a couple of good ideas to check out. Sure Fit (the maker of slipcovers, which relate to dog travel if you squint a bit) calls NYC the most dog-friendly city in the U.S., and lists most of the usual suspects as choices 2-10 (Ann Arbor is an unusual entry). Meanwhile, BellaDOG issued its own list of the Top 10 most dog-friendly cities in the U.S. Portland gets the nod for #1, but #2-10 include some interesting contenders, like Albuquerque and St. Petersburg. Taos, NM is not on either list, but its dog-friendly hotels and restaurants were praised in an Ellen Barone post.

FIDO Friendly also published a Top 10 list, via a guest post on Mom Generations, of the Top 10 dog-friendly U.S. beaches. Two I’d never heard of are Chicago’s Montrose Dog Beach and the beaches of Duck, NC.

By far the biggest and best news in the dog travel world this week, however, is that Marin County’s Department of Environmental Health has changed its policy against allowing dogs to join owners at outdoor restaurant patios — tellingly, the change was made “after receiving complaints from local restaurateurs.” Dogs are now allowed to sit with their owners in Marin’s outdoor dining areas, as long as the area can be accessed from the outside (dogs are still not permitted to walk through restaurants to reach outdoor patios). What joy!