New York – Chelsea, Coco Puff and Darla inhabit digs that are downright un-doglike – not at all what you might expect for two Yorkies and a Pomeranian.
At 80 square feet, their miniature French country house is an exact replica of their owners’ home. It would make just about anyone volunteer to be in the doghouse.
“I’m just a weirdo,” said their owner, Tammy Kassis of Temecula, Calif. “I do go to extremes for my animals.”
Kassis hired the national playhouse and doghouse builder La Petite Maison to create her dogs’ luxury domicile complete with heating, air conditioning, a porch, bay windows and blooming flower boxes. In the end, the landscaped, handcrafted pet sanctuary was $10,000 – an average for La Petite Maison.
“Most of our clients fall into two categories,” said Michelle Pollak, co-owner of La Petite Maison: those who want to impress the neighbors and those who want to give their animals the most comfortable, beautiful home possible.
Kassis is one of the latter. She loves decorating her dog’s house for the holidays, and gets a thrill out of guests’ reactions.
Fred Albert is the author of “Barkitecture,” a survey of beautiful and unusual doghouses from around the world. He credits a 1990 exhibit at New York’s Cooper-Hewitt Museum called “Doghouses” with breeding interest in high-end homes for four-legged friends. Since, there have been several other exhibits, competitions and television shows that address the doghouse as practical art.
Albert says most luxurious doghouses are for charitable events. As many as half of the doghouses featured in his book were not used by dogs at all. “People use them as design elements, as follies, as coffee tables or sculptures,” Albert said.
In Charlotte, N.C., the annual Barkitecture Doghouse Design Competition began in 2004. Anthony Hersey, a 29-year-old architect, chaired the event for its first two years.
Hersey’s first doghouse was auctioned in 2004. But his second, dubbed the K9 Kondo, was a birch-plywood structure with a flat Plexiglas roof and wood rafters the maker simply couldn’t part with. It belongs to Oscar, Hersey’s pet cockapoo.
Hersey says doghouse design competitions and auctions provide young architects and designers with an artistic outlet.”The only parameters are your imagination,” he said.
And imaginations do run wild. Whether the house is a cedar-shingled Nantucket cottage or a rustic log cabin, nothing is out of bounds “barkitecture,” not even recessed lighting, marble floors, mini-bathrooms or radiant heating.
Italian designer Marco Morosini’s company, Dog is a God, suggests doghouses are giving new meaning to the term “best-in-show.” The designer-doghouse craze is even turning up on television. The “Barkitecture” series, which premiered on the Do-It-Yourself Network in July 2005, will be starting its second season this spring. The show couples rescued dogs with families. Once they’re united, co-host Kenny Alfonso designs and builds a special abode for the family’s newest addition. “The inspiration for the design comes from the dog itself,” Alfonso said. For a pug, he built a pagoda. For a “stray hobo dog,” a tent.
Alfonso credits the success of “Barkitecture” to its perfect marriage of the home-improvement craze and “an animal movement, so to speak.”
