By FRANCESCO SPORTELLI

FIUMICINO, Italy (AP) — Dog owners often face a dilemma before traveling: leave your beloved pet with a sitter or at a kennel? Both require quite some planning and logistics, which can be stressful and time-consuming for fur parents.

Rome’s Fiumicino International Airport has sought to streamline the process by opening one of the first on-site hotels at a major European airport, following a similar initiative in Frankfurt. Dog Relais’ workers even retrieve pups from the terminal so travelers can proceed straight to their flight.

“This project is fitting into a strategy to provide a very immersive experience to passengers,” said Marilena Blasi, chief commercial officer at Aeroporti di Roma, the company that manages Italian capital’s two airports. “In this case, we provide services to dogs and the owners of the dogs.”

Basic rooms at the dog hotel cost about €40 ($47) and feature temperature-controlled floors and private gardens. More timid or solitary dogs can be placed in kennels at the edge of the facility, where they interact with staff rather than other dogs in the common grass pens. At night, ambient music that has a frequency with a low, soft tone — 432 hertz — designed for relaxation is piped in through the rooms’ speakers.

There are optional extras that range from the usual grooming, bathing and cleaning teeth services, to the more indulgent, such as aromatherapy with lavender or peppermint scents to help induce calm, or arnica cream rubbed into aching muscles and joints.

Owners unsatisfied with standard-issue webcams for checking in on their canines from afar can spring for a €60 (about $70) premium room equipped with a screen for round-the-clock videocalls. They can even pamper their pet by tossing a treat via an application connected to a dispenser.

The facility not only provides its services to travelers, but also to dog owners who need daycare.

Working in human resources for Aeroporti di Roma, Alessandra Morelli regularly leaves her 2-year-old, chocolate-colored Labrador Retriever there.

“Since I’ve been able to bring Nina to this dog hotel, my life, and the balance between my personal and professional life have changed because it allows me to enjoy my working day and my personal travels in total peace and tranquility,” said Morelli, 47.

Dario Chiassarini, 32, said he started bringing his Rottweiler puppy, Athena, to Dog Relais for training, another service on offer, because it’s clean, well-organized and its location was easily accessible. And he said he plans to check his beloved pup into the hotel whenever he and his girlfriend need to travel.

“We will rely on them without hesitation and without doubt — both because we got to know the people who work here, which for us is essential, and because of the love they have for animals and the peace of mind of knowing who we are entrusting Athena to,” said Chiassarini, who works in car sales. “It is certainly a service that, if we should need it, we will make use of.”

The dog hotel has proved popular so far. All 40 rooms were occupied in August, when Italians take their customary summer vacation and millions of passengers come through Fiumicino. Occupancy averaged almost 2/3 since doors opened in May, said Blasi.

The same month the dog hotel opened, Italy’s commercial aviation authority changed rules to allow large dogs to fly inside plane cabins for domestic flights, provided they are inside secured crates. The first such flight will take off on Sept. 23, according to transport minister, Matteo Salvini.

Salvini admits that while many are happy with having their pups on the plane, others may feel annoyed. However, at a pet conference on Sept. 16, he said: “We always have to use judgment, but … for me it’s a source of pride, as well as a step forward from the point of view of civilization.”

Associated Press writer David Biller in Rome contributed to this report.

By Sydney Page

Special to The Washington Post

It started as a series of jokes.

Matt Nelson began posting one-liners on X, formerly Twitter, in 2015 to test his comedic chops.

“I noticed that all of my jokes that had to do with dogs just did way better than my other jokes,” said Nelson, then a college freshman at Campbell University in Buies Creek, North Carolina.

That sparked an idea.

“If the entire internet loves dogs, and so do I, and I have a knack for writing humorously about them, then I should start a new account,” said Nelson, who grew up in Charleston, West Virginia.

He decided to post a poll on his personal X account, asking his small following if he should create a dog-rating account. At the time, X had a 140-character limit on posts, so Nelson thought numerical ratings were a way to keep things concise.

The poll results were unanimous, and WeRateDogs was born. He added the tagline: “Your only source for professional dog ratings.”

The first post, on Nov. 15, 2015, was of a friend’s dog.

“Here we have a Japanese Irish Setter. Lost eye in Vietnam (?). Big fan of relaxing on stair. 8/10 would pet,” Nelson wrote in an X post, along with a photo of the dog.

“After that first post, we had 100 messages from people wanting their own dog rated,” Nelson said. “It was a nonstop torrent of potential content.”

Within one week of the first post, WeRateDogs had 100,000 followers on X.

Nelson quickly realized that his comedic experiment had a lot of potential. But he had no idea that nearly a decade later, WeRateDogs would continue to have a huge, fiercely loyal following on social media, including 9 million followers on X, 4.4 million on Instagram, 2.8 million on TikTok and 1.2 million on Facebook. His videos regularly get millions of views, with some of them clocking in at tens of millions, and thousands of enthusiastic comments.

It’s also a profitable business with a 501(c)(3) nonprofit arm.

When he first started, Nelson decided to go all-in to figure out if he could make it big. He made the tough choice to drop out of college — where he was studying professional golf management — in 2017 to dedicate all his time to WeRateDogs.

“Once I realized that I had this passion for it and I was having so much fun, nothing I was doing in school was assisting me with that,” said Nelson, who now lives in Los Angeles.

Although his account is lighthearted and funny, Nelson said, running a dog-rating business is no joke.

Initially, he managed everything himself for several months, sifting through thousands of daily dog submissions he was getting through direct messages from fans. He’d select which ones to post and think up a witty caption and rating for each pup.

“In the beginning, it was staggering,” Nelson said. “It was probably close to 5,000 to 6,000 submissions a day.”

Choosing the dogs to feature, he said, felt like an impossible task. So many of them beckoned to be rated. Nelson prioritized the funniest or highest-quality photos.

“Every dog is the best and every dog is the cutest,” Nelson said.

His profile photo hasn’t changed since he started the account. It’s of a dog named Pippin with striking blue eyes and an intense expression, which he picked because he wanted the account to have a playfully absurd feel.

“It felt very formal, and that was contrasted with the ridiculous posts I was making,” Nelson said.

Nelson initially found the photo of Pippin online, but as the account grew, Pippin’s owners eventually got in touch with him and they became friendly.

At first, all dogs were rated fairly high (aside from noncanine animals, which were given low ratings), but they were never rated above 9/10. Then one day, Nelson decided to give one dog a 10/10 rating, and people went wild.

Another day, he gave a dog 11/10.

“That was a eureka moment,” Nelson said.

He adjusted his rating scale so the lowest was 10/10 and the highest was 15/10. Recently, the lowest score has been 12/10. Nelson said his rating process is arbitrary, unless the pup is a true “hero dog” worthy of the coveted 15/10 rating. His generous ratings have become a key part of the WeRateDogs identity.

“When we hit a million followers, I was like, ‘People are paying attention to this in a way that I never would have imagined,’” Nelson said. “I didn’t go into it thinking anything could be accomplished besides a few laughs.”

As the account exploded in popularity, it became too much for Nelson to manage on his own. He brought on someone to help him sort through submissions, though he remained the sole writer for the first five years. He became known for his deadpan wisecracks.

In a 2016 X post, WeRateDogs featured a dog named Duke, sitting in a fridge.

“This is Duke. He sneaks into the fridge sometimes. It’s his safe place. 11/10 would give little jacket if necessary,” Nelson wrote.

Nelson said he focuses on dogs because he doesn’t have a strong opinion about cats, and because he has never had a cat.

“I just know that I wouldn’t be able to make a WeRateCats,” he said. “I wouldn’t do it justice.”

As the account started to get even more popular, dog owners began sharing more information about their pups along with their submissions, including poignant backstories. Although most of the posts remained silly, a few became more serious.

“This is Jacob. In June of 2016, he comforted those affected by the Pulse nightclub shooting in Orlando. Four months ago he flew to Vegas to help families of 59 people grieve. Today, he is in Parkland, Florida hugging students who lost classmates yesterday. He is our third 15/10,” WeRateDogs posted in 2018.

In addition to funny dog photos, followers were often sending WeRateDogs fundraising pages for pups in need, usually to cover unexpected medical bills. In 2017, Nelson started featuring a fundraiser every Friday, which quickly grew to three every Friday to keep up with demand.

The posts, which feature GoFundMe accounts, raised close to $3 million in four years, Nelson said.

“We just knew there was something more there,” he said. “All of this sent us in the direction of a foundation.”

In 2021, Nelson and his team launched a nonprofit group called the 15/10 Foundation with a mission to sponsor dogs with medical needs and improve their chances of adoption.

“We have 45 rescue partners across the U.S., and we’ve sponsored almost 900 dogs. Their average medical cost is just under $5,000,” Nelson said. “Once it felt like people were invested in the account and it meant a lot to them, we could turn it into a real force for good.”

Nelson’s own dog, Doug, whom he called WeRateDogs’ chief executive, died in 2023. Nelson and his girlfriend regularly foster dogs, and said they hope to adopt another one soon.

“It’s like an interview process for our next CEO,” Nelson said.

WeRateDogs now has a team of about 50 people who help run the nonprofit group and the business, which makes money mostly through brand partnerships and by selling merchandise and calendars. Nelson said 15% of net proceeds from merchandise sales go to the foundation. Popular items include stickers and T-shirts that say “tell your dog i said hi.”

“It’s really wonderful to be at the helm of this community,” Nelson said. “It’s just such a kind, empathetic, optimistic community, and I really take a lot of pride in protecting and nurturing that.”

Beyond its signature humorous dog ratings, WeRateDogs publishes a “Top 5 Dogs of the Week,” video, and it recently launched a weekly podcast called “The Dogs Were Good (again).”

Since the dogs continue to be good, and the public seems to have an insatiable desire to know the dogs’ official ratings, Nelson does not have plans to slow down.

“There are just so many dogs to talk about, and I could talk about them forever,” Nelson said.

While WeRateDogs has grown into something Nelson never thought possible, he said his primary goal has never changed — to bring people joy.

“It’s all rooted in that,” Nelson said.