New houses dog friendly...

[Rick Potter]

Just when I thought I had it all. A major home builder, building houses from CA to FL, is offering dog accommodations in any floor plan. This includes a 10 X 17 tiled room, with walk in doggie shower, high powered pet dryer, sleeping area, and flat screen TV.

It also mentions a washer/dryer, which makes me think maybe it is just a big laundry room, but that is not how they portray it.

Guess I had better figure out where to put another addition.

Rick P

[Dan Hintz]

Just when I thought I had it all. A major home builder, building houses from CA to FL, is offering dog accommodations in any floor plan. This includes a 10 X 17 tiled room, with walk in doggie shower, high powered pet dryer, sleeping area, and flat screen TV.

It also mentions a washer/dryer, which makes me think maybe it is just a big laundry room, but that is not how they portray it.

Guess I had better figure out where to put another addition.

Rick P

Flat screen TV.. because we wouldn't want Fido to miss the latest episode of The Dog Whisperer. Does it come with a DVR, too? [rolleyes]

Other than the doggie shower/dryer, the description sounds like every laundry room we've seen in the houses we've been looking at. Tile floor, etc. Doggie shower sounds like the sprayer hose in the wash basins found in those laundry rooms, and the doggie dryer sounds like one of those hand dryers in a men's restroom with a flexible hose attached to it.

Meh, whatever the builders think they can bilk their customers out of more money...

[Tom M King]

For ideas, you can see pictures of our dogroom on my Wife's website. The dog room did require an addition onto our house. It's 16x24, and has a 16x44 covered porch so they can go out when it's raining without getting wet. http://www.starbornhavanese.com/pictures.html Ours does not include a Flat Screen, but does have a CD player.

[Shawn Pixley]

This includes a 10 X 17 tiled room, with walk in doggie shower, high powered pet dryer, sleeping area, and flat screen.

Rick P

I definately do not want a flat screen for them. Our doberman just goes nuts when he sees an animal on television. No amount of help by us can get him past the fact that they are not really there. Of course he chases fairies and butterflies too.

Our deaf rescue dog however has figured this out.

[Mark Bolton]

My dogs have always been just dogs... The extent of their bathing happens at the end of a garden hose with a bottle of soap and they have never seen the end of a hair dryer. To each his own but I have a lot better things to do with my time than to primp and pamper on a dog and if I did happen to get stuck with one that had to for some reason have such treatment (why I dont know) I would sub it out to the local groomer.

They have always lived in the house right along side me and always gone nearly everywhere I do. Current dog is on every job I am, goes to nearly all my vendors with me (and welcomed inside), sleeps on the couch, but she is just a plain ol every day dog. She gets a bath when she gets under the backhoe and scratches her back on the greasy transmission buts about as far as it goes.

[Moses Yoder]

My wife says sound like a room for the husband who is in the dog house.

[Lee Schierer]

Flat screen TV.. because we wouldn't want Fido to miss the latest episode of The Dog Whisperer. Does it come with a DVR, too? [rolleyes]


Directv now offers a pet channel called Dogtv that offers programming like Afternoon stimulation, stimulation, relaxation, etc.

[Rick Potter]

Sorry I can't show it, but the shower was a 3' high replica of a full size people shower. The dryer, not shown, was some sort of high speed dryer, maybe like they would use in a doggie beauty parlor?

Rick P

You mean Dogtv is only for dogs? Darn.

[Brian Elfert]

10 x 17 seems pretty big for just a laundry room, but I haven't been looking at larger houses to see what they are putting in these days. My previous house was built in 2001 and had about a 5x10 laundry room on the second floor.

[Dave Richards]

Just when I thought I had it all. A major home builder, building houses from CA to FL, is offering dog accommodations in any floor plan. This includes a 10 X 17 tiled room, with walk in doggie shower, high powered pet dryer, sleeping area, and flat screen TV.

It also mentions a washer/dryer, which makes me think maybe it is just a big laundry room, but that is not how they portray it.

Guess I had better figure out where to put another addition.

Rick P

Is machine washing and tumble drying your dog a thing now? It must be hard to keep the washer balanced for the spin cycle. I bet I could get both of mine in the dryer at the same time. Seems like it would be kind of noisy, though. :D

[Wade Lippman]

I definately do not want a flat screen for them. Our doberman just goes nuts when he sees an animal on television. No amount of help by us can get him past the fact that they are not really there.

Our dogs have never even looking in the TV's direction, except when there is an interesting noise. I figured that they considered it irrelevant because it had no smell, but I read that dogs process images twice as fast as humans. So to them TV is just an annoying sequence of still images.

I wonder what your dog finds so interesting.

My wife and I have a running argument about bathing the dog. I have no problem with using water to clean off mud or roadsalt, but I think using soap strips the oils out of her coat and endangers her health in cold waters. My wife thinks it doesn't matter.

[Mike Chance in Iowa]

Our dogs have never even looking in the TV's direction, except when there is an interesting noise. I figured that they considered it irrelevant because it had no smell, but I read that dogs process images twice as fast as humans. So to them TV is just an annoying sequence of still images.


My one dog discovered the TV when I retired him from working. He didn't have his normal energy outlet so whenever a dog barked on the screen he would rush the TV and thump it. If the dog ran off the screen, he went off in that direction looking for it. His younger half-sister was VERY interested in watching the Simpsons on TV back when they played multiple rerun episodes in the evenings. (Maybe they still do that? We haven't had a TV in years and back then, we only had the 1 channel.) We would turn the TV on a low volume and let her enjoy her TV while we went about our evening chores!