Can you tell that I’m already making plans for our next vacation? Back in 2009 I pointed you towards Landmark Trust and National Trust vacation rental properties in the U.K. (and elsewhere, including, blissfully, France and Italy) that welcome pet dogs, and a few months later I added a post about Scotland’s dog-friendly National Trust vacation rental properties. I remember (or I think I do, at least) looking for similar options in Ireland, and not finding them.

How happy I was to look again, yesterday, and learn that the Irish Landmark Trust has 25 vacation rental properties, sprinkled across the entire island. Right now, the only way to filter your search results is by indicating the number of human visitors. When you do that, you’re provided with a list of properties that indicates, in bullet points highlighting each property’s essential features, whether that property welcomes dogs or not. Currently, 15 of the available properties welcome at least one dog, and each is tempting.

Feast your eyes, for example, on Helen’s Tower, in Northern Ireland’s County Down. Built in the 19th c. and immortalized in poems by Tennyson (written at the request of Lord Dufferin) and Robert Browning, it sleeps two people (and one dog). The kitchen and bedroom look basic, but the living room is magnificent, and the views! the location! (and, hello, the reasonable price!).

Helen’s Tower (Photo by Irish Landmark Trust)

And check out this octagonal kitchen in the Wicklow Head Lighthouse (sleeps 4, one dog allowed):

Wicklow Head Lighthouse (Photo by Irish Landmark Trust)

There isn’t a clunker in the bunch. After reading (and loving) Stella Tillyard’s Aristocrats, I think I’d choose to start with the Batty Langley Lodge on the edge of the Castletown House estate — it looks delightfully cozy, and I know Chloe would enjoy walking around the estate’s park as much as I would.