Cows roam the front lawn of a country home.
My clients truly love their animals. Some live in the country and have cows in their front yards and raise the cutest baby goats I’ve ever seen. They occasionally traipse in some hay or red clay mud, and it is cleaned up. That’s part of living in the country.
Baby kiko goats on the back porch of a client's home
When choosing to have pets like cows, goats, and even peacocks, the family knows ahead of time that some of that mess will end up in the home. When I help them design their homes, I make sure that the floors have enough poly urethane on them to resist scratches, and that the fabrics are not so precious as to not be able to sit down on them when they come in exhausted and sweaty. Most of my clients who have homes in the country with that many animals understand there will be some kind of debris brought into their home. They deal with it.
I have the usual clients with a cat or a dog, and most of my pet peeves center around those particular animals. Seems these lovely animals really do sit around and try to see how much they can get away with in the home. I have a 12 lb poodle myself. Very smart little dog. When I lived in a previous home, she used to be able to push open the door that wouldn’t latch to my bedroom and hop up on the bed. One day I discovered that she was afraid of the vacuum cleaner, and wouldn’t cross over the threshold to the bedroom if the vacuum was in front of the door. I left it there for several days and applauded myself for finding a way to stop her from getting in all the time. Then one day one of my kids asked me, “When are you going to put that vacuum cleaner away?” My answer was that I left it there on purpose because the dog, who was standing at my feet looking up at me, was afraid of the vacuum and was “too stupid” to know she could just walk over it and it wouldn’t hurt her. As I said this out loud, I glanced down at the dog, and I could see a new look of determination on her face.
Guilty Dog
You guessed it,the next day I walked over the vacuum cleaner and into my bedroom to see my dog proudly sitting on the pillow on top of my bed.
My clients seem to have even worse problems. Some clients tell me that we can’t put anything on the mantle, at all, because “the cat likes to walk up there.” One client tells me that everytime I put a dried floral in the home, the cat samples all the leaves. Doesn’t seem to like the flowers, just the leaves.
My clients with dogs don’t seem to fare much better. Some tell me we can only purchase a rug and furniture that is the color of the hair on the dog. That way they won’t have to vacuum every 30 minutes. A recent client was telling me how, due to static electricity in her home, her white dog’s hair sticks to the painted black stair rail when he rubs his back on them.
Guiltier Dog
And then there is always the gnawing on the furniture. I fixed this problem myself by rubbing jalepeno pepper juice on the rungs of the rocking chair my new pup was intent on chewing. Seemed to not want to eat it anymore.
While we love our pets, it does seem that they rule the home sometimes. In designing for a home with pets, I now pay attention to what color the hair on the animal is, what kind of animal they have, is it house trained yet, how large is the animal and how many run (or fly) around the home. This is probably as important as how many children, and how often we entertain. There is no point putting in a sisal rug that a cat might eat or a dog dig up. Money down the drain no matter how great it might look for a few weeks. Pets are an important part of many of the homes I design, and are always factored into the design.
Occasionally though, one of these lovely four-legged family members does something terrible….and we deal with it. We clean it up, reupholster the piece, sand down the rough edges from the chewing and plump up those pillows. They are part of the family, and we love them anyways.
Tell me what your pet has done to your home and how you “dealt with it.”
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