Should you add a dog mudroom in your basement?
Simple ways to make your current mudroom pet-friendly and different from a dog room or 'dogio'
I’d been called to my grandfather’s house to help clean up and pack his belongings after his passing. But while my parents and I were clearing out my grandfather’s basement bar and his toolshed, I was doing a few loads of my own laundry. (Team Multi-Task!) But as I walked from one end of the basement to the other, I noticed a flash of color go right by me. My mother was running full speed past my grandfather’s pool table, snatched open a curtain that had been mounted to cover the cubby hole area underneath my grandfather’s steps, and yanked it closed.
Shortly after, I saw my Hound mix come flying down the basement steps and sniffing the air, prowling around to figure out where my mother went. Then, it hit me that my mother was playing Hide n’ Seek with my dog. I wanted to laugh at this child-like moment with the woman who raised me, but I didn’t want to give my dog any hints as to where she was, so I turned back to the basement bar and kept wrapping shot glasses.
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The heavy blackout curtain was surprisingly throwing my dog off, who couldn’t seem to get a good sniff of my mother behind it. But my mother told on herself by poking her head out, and my now-barking dog darted underneath the steps to jump on her thighs. I grinned, watching those two, and got a glimpse of why she insists on calling herself a “grand-dog-mom.” (My older brother has kids, so yes, she is already a grandmother. Meanwhile, you could put me in a room of pit bulls and I’m at ease. Put me in a kindergarten, and I’ll scream and run. I do not have maternal instincts.)
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But there was something else I noticed about this basement that I hadn’t before. For more than three decades of hanging out in my grandfather’s basement, he’d never had a dog. (They did have a dog before I was born.) After my mother ran into the human-sized cubby hole under the basement steps, I realized his basement would’ve been a perfect place for a dog room — or a dog mudroom.
Recommended Read: “Set up your shopping list for a mudroom ~ Avoid tracking in all the slush, snow and mud from a messy winter season”
Having a dog mudroom is a little different than having a “dogio” (the dog version of a catio) or an upper-level dog room. Here’s how these three rooms differ.