Dog Mansions For The Pampered Pooch

Everyone has heard of a dog house, but have you heard about a dog mansion?

These are dog-sized replicas of human houses that offer every conceivable type of interior amenity as their larger counterparts. And they also come with a hefty price too!

Take Tammy Kassis for example - she owns a Victorian mansion in Temecula, California, and is the loving caregiver to three little dogs. So loving in fact that she spent roughly $20,000 for a custom built dog house that is a mini version of her Victorian mansion. This specifically designed dog house is 11 feet tall, has its own turret and vaulted ceilings.

Inside the doggie mansion, the three 4lb dogs can enjoy watching their own television whilst being comforted by air conditioning and heating. There is even a doorbell, a doggie door, hardwood floors and designer doggie beds too. On the outside the dogs' have their own porch and yard surrounded by a white picket fence.

"I would do it again in a heartbeat," Kassis said. "I live in it. I hang out in there with them. We have had camp-outs with my niece and nephew."

Expensive Interiors

Besides the ostentatious size of such doggie mansions, the interior amenities are just as expensive. Such amenities include electricity, heating and air conditioning, plumbing, crown molding, designer wallpaper and paint, closets, beds, yards, fences and even patios.

The designer of the Kassis dog mansion is a famed architect to the world's most pampered pooches: Alan Mowrer.

Owner of La Petite Maison in Denver, Colorado, Mowrer works alongside partner and interior designer Michelle Pollak. Pollak runs The Lollipop Tree in Charleston, South Carolina. Together they have designed roughly 20 dog mansions over the past 10 years or so. Starting at around $5,000, the dog mansions can increase in amount to the mid $30,000s depending on overall size and extravagance.

Pampered Pooches

Other clients of La Petite Maison includes model, Rachel Hunter's three dogs, a Doberman, a German shepherd and a Labrador retriever.

"It has a lot of wrought iron. It is Spanish style with turrets and a light in each tower. It looks great at night," Mowrer said. "It has hardwood floors, wallpaper, and wrought iron on the front doors. We replicated part of her house."

Mowrer and Pollak enlisted the help of an artist to hand-paint every brick that was used to build another client's dog house for her Labrador. The goal was to have the color of the bricks in the dog mansion match the color of the bricks of the client's mansion.

Another client in Long Beach, California, purchased a miniature version of a Spanish cathedral with stained glass windows and white marble granite floors for their Chihuahua.

Industry Standards

Pollack has stated that the dog mansion business was doing very well until last year when the housing market crashed.

"Our clients were not directly affected but out of respect for their friends and colleagues who were, they postponed some purchases until 2010," she explained. "Everyone felt the effects of the economy. When your friends are affected by something that large, you don't want to go throwing your money around."

A West Palm Beach, Florida, company called Doggie Mansions has had to temporarily halt its services. When Donald Gorbach founded the company back in 2006, he was offering doghouses from $10,500 up to $100,000. Due to the sharp downturn in the US economy such prices are no longer feasible, with Gorbach explaining:

"We thought it was a bad time to promote $10,000 doghouses when people are losing their homes."

However, it seems that money is never a concern to a few wealthy pet owners who can afford such stately dog houses. Kassis explains:

"Life is about choices and everyone has their standards. There is no right or wrong. I will do whatever it takes to make my animals safe and happy."

Photo Credit: libraryrachel