Dogs rule on muttropolitan home comforts
By Mary Daniels
Chicago Tribune
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 country home in Three Oaks, Mich.
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 U.S. 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, 176 pages, $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:
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, which is decorated entirely with Arts and Crafts pieces of furniture. 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 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.
Often these "handicapped-accessible" adaptations prove as beneficial for master as they are for pooch.
"My mother is infirm and we wanted her to have easy access to the outdoors, too," says Marcy LeMaster-Gibbons, an investor in Integrative Pet Care, a Chicago animal-care facility that incorporates design that's compliant with the Americans with Disabilities Act.
"There are now four stairs going down to the basement, but we can put in a ramp easily."
She consults with clients who want to build a ramp for an aging or infirm dog on their deck or front porch.
"We use ramps to get the dogs (and cats) into a resistance pool and onto underwater treadmills," she says. She recommends a 6-degree incline.
An alternative she recommends is the ramps sold to load or unload a dog from the back of a car or van. They are available at pet supermarkets such as PetsMart in telescoping, wide, lightweight, folding and small sizes ($39 to $149).
Richar, who only goes by one name, is a Chicago interior designer responsible for 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."
Another cliche bites the dust.
