Muttropolitan homes: It’s becoming more popular to make homes fit for the dogs
The human home is now just as much the dog’s. Homeowners who are building or remodeling have taken to considering their pets’ needs as much as they do those of their biped family members, turning “pet-friendly decorating” into industry buzzwords.
This is about more than stylish dog beds that cost upward of $350; this is about stain-resistant fabrics, scratch-resistant flooring, colors that match a pooch’s coat, or out-and-out design and architectural elements.
In Chris Rudolph’s case, the Chicago architect put in “dog overlooks” and a “Doggy Detox,” a large porcelain-tiled shower with hand-held showerhead, when building his Michigan home.
With dual entrances from both outdoors and the garage, the shower is where cleanliness is next to dogliness for his Labradors, Elmslee and Priscell, upon return from an outside romp. The Doggy Detox is lined in durable Italian tile that canine claws cannot mar. There is a towel rack and a spot for shampoo and brushes.
The “dog overlooks” are two square openings, one for each dog, cut into the wall of the second-floor loft that overlooks the first floor. This way, the Labs “can know where their humans are without running all over the place,” Rudolph says.
The idea came about when the house was being framed and one of the dogs stuck her head through the wall framing, trying to get a sighting of her people. Rudolph took the hint and since has put another one of these into a client’s house.
Rudolph - like many of the millions of pet owners in the United States who spent $36 billion on their four-legged friends in 2005, according to the American Pet Products Manufacturers Association - has become part of the growing American trend of creating a home with sensitivity toward pets’ housekeeping and style needs.
The roots of the phenomenon may have taken hold when pet columnist and author Julia Szabo started writing five years ago about easy solutions for keeping pets and a clean, stylish interior. In her book, “Animal House Style, Designing a Home to Share with Your Pets,” (Bulfinch, $19.95), she shares a state-of-the-art compendium of every possible solution, every available product and company contact for creating the pet-friendly home.
Some examples:
- Picking ginger Ultrasuede upholstery to match the coat of a yellow Lab.
- Hanging a decorative antique wrought-iron rack in the shape of a row of horses’ heads as a place to hang dog collars and leads.
- Choosing easy-to-wash (and bleach) slipcovers that make pet hair easy to spot (white denim) or make it impossible to spot (green camouflage fabric).
- Putting inexpensive or old sheets atop the expensive ones so your pooch is always welcome on the bed. Or adding extra-tall legs on the bed, making it too high for a smaller dog to get atop.
Alice Lerman, owner of the Barker and Meowsky pet store in Chicago, has noticed clients trying to incorporate more pet-friendly design elements at the basic level, such as more fashionable pet beds and accoutrements.
Allyson Heumann, owner of two black pugs, Maximilian and Morgan Ellie, didn’t want “airline crates” or ugly plastic pet taxis in her living room. So the downtown dweller bought two small, aged cedar doghouses shaped like Chicago bungalows. They’re meant for the outdoors, but Heumann had an ironmonger design Arts and Crafts-style open grillwork doors that latch “like a gate when entering a house” and the pair of houses now serve as fitting indoor retreats for her pooches.
Homeowners are also responding to the needs of their aging or infirm pets.
Lerman, for example, had a custom elevator with a steel cage incorporated into the design of the back porch of her house so her handicapped dog could get to her third-floor apartment after visits to the back yard. Her father built it after Woody, her Alaskan malamute, lost a leg to bone cancer. The elevator gave Woody, who was weak from surgery, “some added time,” Lerman says.
Richar, who only goes by one name, is a Chicago interior designer responsible for some of the most chic and high-end interiors in town. He is happy to make adjustments for his pair of Pekingese, because Cookie and Daisy, he says, are his “anti-stress pill.”
“I have dogs that shed, but wood floors are always great and easy to vacuum,” he says. “Smoother-textured fabrics don’t grab the hair. Leather is great on chairs, and scratches from dog paws just add patina to it.”
The dogs sleep in a hand-carved antique dog bed from Indonesia outfitted with a deep blue mohair pillow, “so they look very regal,” he says. And they sip from an English mahogany Chippendale-base food stand out of blue, Asian porcelain bowls.
“They go to the office with me and to the country on the weekend,” says Richar. “What a life.”
TWELVE TIPS FOR FEATHERING A PET-FRIENDLY NEST
1. Materials matter: Choose high-performance textiles, such as Crypton fabrics, and consider matching the color to your pet’s coat so shed hair is not so noticeable.
2. Grazing in the grass: Many houseplants are toxic to pets but oat or wheatgrass is safe. Not only does the color go with any interior, the grass actually helps the hairball situation with cats. Try making a little “mat” that can be used as a centerpiece or accent in front of a fireplace by filling a large jellyroll pan with potting mix and wheatgrass seeds.
3. Floor talk: Hardwood is best for floors, says pet journalist and design diva Julia Szabo, as it is the easiest to clean. But you don’t want them to be too dark. “Stick with light to medium wood on floors as scratches show up less,” she says. “The furniture should have minimally exposed wood because of canines’ propensity to chewing.
4. Think vinyl: Yes, vinyl. “Vinyl has come up in the world,” Szabo says. She recommends a type of vinyl flooring called Lonseal (see www.lonseal.com). “It is really beautiful flooring and comes in primary colors. Some have a texture like Diamond Plate, which has an embossed pattern.” It also is very easy to keep clean.
5. Watch the walls: Choose a paint that is pet-safe in case they are tempted to lick it or eat flakes or peels of it. Szabo recommends Benjamin Moore’s Pristine ecoSpec, a paint low in volatile organic compounds that is recommended for hospitals. Their Regal Matte line is the first wipe-able flat paint, Szabo adds.
6. Prepare to patch: If you are wallpapering, buy an extra roll in case your pet occasionally peels a piece off with his or her teeth.
7. Climbing the walls: Charlotte Reed, a New York pet-care expert and author, has cats in her apartment that like to climb and need to exercise. So she put up beautifully crafted wooden sconces on the walls, not for decoration but as a kitty version of mountain climbing.
8. Better than lifeguards: If you have a pool, Reed recommends making “a nice enclosure around the pool. Many dogs drown in uncovered pools in the summertime,” she says.
9. Bed protection: Reed’s cats love to lounge in her bed on which she has some very expensive bedding. So when she leaves for the day, she places a sheet with rubber backing (you can also use a plastic tablecloth) atop the bed, “so if someone vomits, it won’t go all the way through.”
10. Gurgle, gurgle: A running water dog fountain not only takes care of pets’ drinking needs, it also can add an element of feng shui to a room.
11. Save the plants: Hang them from the ceiling. Or, for plants on the floor, put aluminum foil around the base to keep cats from using them as a litter box.
12. Playing keep-away: Use cedar to keep cats from places you don’t want them to be. Limit figurines, pieces of silver, glass bowls in places where pets might knock them over.
