"How did you sleep?"

A seemingly innocuous, considerate question when posed by a host to her houseguests over breakfast, right? Wrong! I'm realizing, during this hot summer of hosting and being hosted, that an honest response can be hazardous to one's visit, and lead to, well, future nights tossing and turning, worrying about the correct reply. 

For instance, I was recently hosted by a friend in Los Angeles. The first night I slept in a bedroom in the main house, only to be kept awake by her dog, who was...