My dogs have the nicest dog house in the world. I know because I thought it was going to be my house when I bought it. The thing I thought was going to be my sanctuary--my castle even--turned out to be my dogs’ kingdom, a realm in which I neither reign nor rule. My wife and I march to the beat of our dogs’ drums, and they’re terrible musicians.

The result of this state of affairs is what can only truly be called a dog house. I’m not talking about the red-roofed thing Snoopy slept on. I’m talking about a house--the kind with a mortgage and real estate taxes--in which dogs are real parts of the family. A dog house.

So what are the essential elements of a true dog house? Here is my list:

1 – Dog hair everywhere

You’re not really taking this list seriously if you don’t start here. There’s the balls of dust and fur that gather in corners that the Roomba can’t get to. There’s the random dog hair that you see on your plate when you’re trying to eat leftovers in front of the TV. There’s the hair all over your clothes that forces you to keep an emergency lint roller in your car. And, of course, there’s the bane of every dog owner’s existence--the dog hair in the mouth. In my dog house, hardly a day goes by that I don’t have to dig some gross dog hair out of my mouth, and that doesn’t even account for Fantom Dog Hair Syndrome, where you think you have a dog hair in your mouth but maybe you’re just imagining it. 

2 – At least one medium-expensive dog bed that never actually gets slept on by a dog

Okay, maybe this one doesn’t happen to everybody, but it happens to a lot of us. You buy your dog a nice, expensive dog bed--and the dog doesn’t use it. She’ll use every other soft surface she can find to lie on, but there is something about the not-cheap bed purchased explicitly for that purpose that makes the dog bed undesirable for any of my dogs to actually lie on. 

3 – Random puddles of dog slobber--or worse?

The big dog puddles will stop being a big problem after you and the furry buddy figure out how to deal with the grossest of it, but there are other more-subtle-but-also-kinda-gross little puddles to look out for. The nearly universal one for dog owners is the drool puddle. Some dogs drool a lot, others only a little. Some will helpfully drop most of their drool into an easily gathered puddle while other dogs seem to like spreading their slobber in diverse artistic patterns across the house like a canine Andy Warhol (Andy Woofhol? No? Okay.). There’s also the water-vomit, where a dog gulps down too much water too quickly and then promptly yacks it up in the next room and the wet-fur smear from when a wet dog comes in the house and lies down on the hardwood.

4 – Destuffed dog toy carcasses strewn about like a World War 1 no-man’s land

Maybe you have gentle dogs that handle their toys with loving care. Our dogs--dare I say most dogs out there--are more of the destroying-because-it’s-fun types. Combine that with a pair of parents who don’t feel like we are loving our dogs hard enough if we aren’t constantly buying them new toys, and what you get are mangled and de-stuffed dog toys everywhere. Now, you may ask, “Why don’t you just quit buying all the frigging dog toys?” At least part of the answer is that there are times when I’m willing to pick up a zillion toy bits later in exchange for some peace and quiet right now. 

5 -- A bark circus whenever the doorbell rings

Every dog owner has experienced this. You are doing something that requires a minimal level of noise--maybe napping, maybe concentrating on work, or maybe you're in an online meeting--and the doorbell rings. In a dogless house, this is a momentary noise that you might even happily ignore if you know it’s an Amazon delivery or something. But in a dog house, the doorbell ringing sets dogs into hyper alarm mode, which is great when you are in actual danger, but it can be a huge interruption for a routine delivery. If only some ingenious inventors would come up with something . . .