A Dog Among Us: How to Keep the Dog -- and the House

Don’t children make as much mess too? You don’t throw them out do you?

When you have a dog (or dogs) in the house, it’s like having children living with you. Your house has to make adjustments for the presence of these little ones. Can you maintain a house with minimal maintenance even with the presence of your canine pack members?

Canine Interior Decoration

One of the first things we folded away soon as these furkids started to live with us was the carpet. Another was the fabric upholstered sofa.

Years ago, when we used to have Boxers, I remember walking to the kitchen in the middle of the night only to halt midway in my tracks when I saw the cutest – yet most horrifying – sight I will never forget. I saw four comfy Boxers in the dark lined up side by side on our sofa, heads in a row, taking a snooze. The hairs, the doggy smells! I drove them to their feet.

You need not complain that your house will be “bare” once you let your pets in. We haven’t sacrificed aesthetics because of these doggy members of the house. Our furniture is wooden and antique. Seats are cane rush but piled with colorful throw pillows (when one of the dogs was still young we stored the pillows up on a shelf at night) . Instead of small elegant antiques or other accessories scattered around the house, expensive but breakable and inviting to canine teeth, we work with plants, decor given by friends, and distracting color in big ways The living room walls are avocado green with white trim. The dining room is mango yellow. Great background for the drabby antique furniture. The kitchen is strawberry red with light beige countertops.

We don’t have a sofa. Nobody misses it anyway.

Style accessories are large and definitely un-breakable (or unreachable): antique carved wooden boxes, a 1950s army chest, antique lamps set far from doggy reach, hardbound books, a huge Amorsolo style painting, two eight-bulb cut glass chandeliers, and tall palms in big pots. We play with lighting when there are guests. Most furniture surfaces are bare to show sheen, sometimes there are small lace doilies to protect the finish; we don’t use long cloths that hang over the edge. We don't use a tablecloth either (hairs collect under the fabric that hangs over the table). Floors are varnished and easily kept shiny. I used to get upset with those canine scratches but hey, isn’t the distressed look in?

Floor scratches, the chewed foot of a wooden shell divider or the deep gouges on the front door from constant scratching – these are what give the house character and its lived-in look.

Unique to our doggy household is the “biscuit jar.” If they were kids it would be the cookie jar but since they’re dogs – it’s the biscuit jar. The contents of this is a permanent fixture of our monthly grocery list. We buy cheap crunchy biscuits and store them there – as reward for any good behavior the dogs may exhibit. (The reward treats have to be immediately accessible, thus the jar is part of the interior decor).

And oh yes, when we had our kitchen remodeled, I designed a doggy gate. It’s a low swing door to keep the pooches from lounging in the kitchen.

Spot waits for meal call before the kitchen.

The House? Or the Dog?

Of course you can keep both. You just have to make way for their existence. Don’t children make as much mess too? You don’t throw them out do you?

We used to battle doggy odors in the house because of these pooches. During the rainy season when they want to go out for bathroom call, they end up doing it inside the house instead. Then we had a carport constructed near the front door so when it’s raining and one of the dogs feel the bathroom call, he can go to the carport (he has no other choice) and do it there and not get wet in the rain.

Bleaches may smell clean and antiseptic but it’s not strong enough to mask a dog’s urine smell. He can still detect where he last sprinkled. The enzymatic cleaners work best if you can find one and for awhile I bought mine from a private individual who made her formulas in her kitchen. One squirt and like a miracle, the doggy residual smell vaporizes. Some doggy companies have cleansers that work just as well. We use a particular one that leaves behind a minty smell. Once I even tried mouthwash!
A friend of mine introduced me to peroxide. She keeps two terriers inside the house, one housebroken the other not quite. The latter wears pet diapers. In case the former pees around the house, it's a quick swipe of the rag and a follow-up of hydrogen peroxide with its bubbling hissing sound which removes all traces including the smell.

Dog hairs are your next challenge so we have a rule in the house never to allow dogs to sleep on the beds. Our dogs have their own beds – those plastic canine baskets which we line with polyester fiber filled pillows so the whole thing is washable. You can’t avoid dog hairs – just limit their appearance from more surfaces than you can afford.

A doggy basket.

We live in a fenced-in property and our dogs being Dalmatians, we never cage or chain them up. During the day we keep the front door open so the dogs can freely run in and out. Twice a day, they have their exercise out in the neighborhood, our househelp armed with plastic bags or paper sheets to scoop up their droppings. At night, it’s a bathroom trip for everybody before the front door is finally closed. But they’ve learned to wake any of us in case they still feel the urge.

Other times, we read the signals. A dog sitting or standing by the closed front door for a long time and staring at you is signaling a desire to step out.

     Finally, one of the biggest reasons why a dog is thrown out the house are the fleas. Invest in a superior brand of anti-flea treatment because it is worth your money. When I was new to caring for dogs, spending big bucks for an anti-flea product was preposterous -- until we started scratching inside the house, getting red marks on our skin, and finding fleas crawling on the walls. Would you let guests in your house experience that too? I forked out the money.
   If you will find the occasional stray flea in your dog's ear or between his toes, we have another strange item we keep around the house: a small bottle (actually 2) of alcohol where we drop the unfortunate mite into. They are usually found in some convenient place like among the bookshelves or in some centrally located spot like the telephone. Do not crush fleas with your nails -- no matter how tempted you are to do it! Fleas carry toxins and diseases. You're better off just letting it die in one piece than crushing it to death and its blood spread everywhere from your fingernails to the doorknobs and the ballpens your children put in their mouths. Tweezers do a cleaner job of picking up the entire flea or tick rather than your fingers which can harbor germs underneath the nail.
      Finally the flea infestation was solved -- we finally had a clean house and nobody was scratching especially the dogs. Fleas, odors, hairs finally under control.
       From then on, we’ve kept both – the house and the dogs.