It's a dog's life when renting

Living in an apartment shouldn't mean you can't have a pet - as long as it doesn't cause trouble for others

An upscale block of apartments in Dublin's Grand Canal Dock has a strong dog policy: it welcomes them. "We've gained from doing so," says letting agent Owen Reilly, who advised the company which owns the 84 €2,000-a-month apartments in The Marker building to have a pro-pets policy.

"We're targeting foreign corporate tenants," he explains, such as the Americans and Europeans who work in nearby Facebook and Google. "They are surprised that if they want to live in an apartment, they can't rent if they have a dog."

Roisin McDonagh, proud owner of two-and-a-half-year old Labrador Roxie, has been looking for an apartment to rent for more than a year now - and is shocked at the number of landlords, mainly apartment owners, who do not allow dogs. She got Roxie when she was living with her boyfriend in a house in Kildare, and moved temporarily into a small house after they split. That was more than a year ago, and now 30-year-old Roisin has moved back home to the south-east to live with her parents while her hunt goes on.

What she wants is to rent an apartment (not in Dublin) for around €400-€500 per month, "the only realistic rent for a single person. Of course not all dogs are house- trained or well behaved indoors but it's very unfair for property owners to discriminate against all dogs. It's a common misunderstanding that a dog needs a garden, it does not, and can easily live in an apartment once exercised daily, with a before-bed toilet trip outside".

Roxie, she says, is highly trained in every way including toilet-trained; she "behaves herself during the day while I'm at work and sleeps in my bed at night."Roisin is planning to go back to college to study veterinary nursing: doing work experience with a vet, she's been reassured that dogs adapt to being left on their own for hours.

Roisin believes that people, especially those who live alone, feel safer having a dog to deter intruders: "It's about time, in 2013, for landlords to relax their 'no pet' rules, especially if you can prove your dog is better behaved than any human they could be renting to."

It doesn't seem as though Irish landlords are ready to ease up on a "no dogs" policy anytime soon, however, unless as in The Marker (where about eight apartments are let to people with dogs), a tenant is willing to pay top dollar. Dublin-based letting agent Igor Fleming says that generally, most tenants sign standard leases with a "no pets" clause in them.

However, "a landlord getting €2,000-€3,000 a month for a large penthouse might ask for a large security deposit and turn a blind eye if someone brought in a dog" - with the proviso that it's the tenant's responsibility to make sure the Owners' Management Committee (OMC) isn't upset.

Some Americans and European renters come armed with references for their pets, he says - "John the terrier is a lovely pet and has treated my property really well" sort of thing. Fleming would usually look for a house for these renters.

People renting houses make their own letting rules, and generally it's agreed that pet lovers will rent to other pet lovers.

Nessa Walsh, her husband, three children and one dog, Björk, have been living in a rented house in Blackrock, Co Dublin, for three years. "We rented it, unfurnished, through an agent and forgot to tell him 'til the last minute that we had a dog," she explains. "But the owner said that as long as there were no complaints from the neighbours, that was okay - she didn't ask for an extra deposit or anything. All our dealings with her have been very positive, and there are lots of other families with dogs on the road."

Apartment owners don't have the same latitude. A spokesperson for the Irish Property Owners association (IPOA) says that OMCs make rules with, amongst other things, the "objective of enhancing the quiet and peaceable occupation of units" in a development. In practice, she says, "most multi-unit properties exclude pets but this rule is often breached and ignored by OMCs if the animal does not cause nuisance/danger to other residents."

These are rules that usually apply to apartment owners, so a landlord who signed a letting agreement that allowed a tenant to have pets would be in a difficult spot if that tenant's pet caused problems, says solicitor Pat Igoe. Typical letting agreements simply say "no pets allowed".

Ireland's cultural attitudes play a very important part in keeping dogs out of apartments: many of us think it's cruel to the animal. Owen Reilly said he would have shared the feeling that dogs shouldn't be in apartments until he got his own Pugalier (a pug crossed with a Cavalier King Charles Spaniel). Owen's apartment is a few floors up in the same building as his ground floor office in Grand Canal Dock: he takes his dog out in the early morning and at 11am, and "we have lunch together. He doesn't bark, ever, and has a corner on the terrace if he has to go to the toilet." House-trained dogs, he says, are extremely clean.

Bray vet Pete Wedderburn, who dishes out advice to pet-owners on TV and in newspaper columns, says it's a common misconception that a dog must have a garden,and that "that letting a dog into a garden for 15 minutes is equivalent to walking it. A dog owner must make a commitment to walking their dog for half-an-hour, twice a day". As far as he is concerned, there is no reason why a dog shouldn't live in an apartment. "Look at New York," he says. But equally, he points out that no dog should be left alone for more than two hours at a time. For people who work long hours, there's a growing number of services in Ireland, both dog walkers, and doggy daycare, costing around €18 a day. One doggy daycare business here, Mutt Ugly, has three branches in Ranelagh and Dublin city centre.

Wedderburn believes size doesn't count when deciding which breed would make a good apartment dog: a laidback Cavalier King Charles would be easier to manage than a Wicklow collie that wants to be out all the time; terriers of all sorts, small or big, are more likely to bark. Dog owners should talk to organisations such as Dogs Trust or the DSPCA to get advice, he says.

He understands why landlords might look for higher deposits before allowing a dog to live in his or her property: but children, students, even smokers are a risk to property too.

Pooches permitted: Where doggies dare

Many Irish people believe keeping a dog in an apartment, where it doesn't have immediate access to a garden, is cruel. But they do things differently elsewhere.

Take New York, for example: it's estimated that there are some 300,000 dogs in Manhattan alone, and most aren't living in houses. But co-ops and condos have stiff rules about what kind of dogs can live in their building.

Some ban dogs outright. Some ban breeds such as pit bulls. Many, bizarrely, have strict rules about dog weight: a recent New York Times article reported that one Park Avenue co-op had a 25lb weight limit, while a condo a few streets away allowed dogs up to 50lbs.

A dog-friendly real estate agent in Manhattan warns that renters with dogs will likely need cash to pay an extra deposit; and tenants may need vet certification of the dog's weight. On the plus side, she says that if you openly keep a pet for three months, with or without permission, the landlord has to let you keep it.

In Nice, France, however, every second person has a dog, and most live in apartments, says Lindsy Garnier, an Irishwoman who has lived in the city for three years. Although she doesn't think it's fair to keep dogs in apartments, she says that all her office colleagues have pets: one man keeps two big dogs and cats in his rented studio apartment.

Renters rarely ask if pets are allowed : it's assumed that they are. But they are well-behaved French dogs, the kind you see dining out with their owners in restaurants. And owners do bring their dogs out for exercise - "the proof is on the pavements," she says wryly.

Kersten Mehl believes that many Europeans, accustomed to apartment living for generations, understand that rules - about everything from noise pollution to pet ownership - are meant to be kept, and will be enforced. A member of the Society of Chartered Surveyors Ireland property facilities management group, he believes that landlords here will go on being wary of renting to pet owners until they are sure that the same is true in Ireland.

Barkitecture: Now your dog's home can be its castle

It's not just owners who want to make their pooches feel at home. Architects have decided aesthetically minded canines should enjoy a suitably stylish home environment. A snazzy basket no longer suffices. The discerning dog wants designer furniture in keeping with its owner's taste, apparently.

In New York, Architecture for Dogs is an idea conceived by Kenya Hara. The creative director of Muji has launched what they call "dog structure designs" created by world-class architects.

These barkitecture blueprints by well-known designers and architects are free to download, and are even breed-specific.

Product designer Konstantin Grcic came up with a showbiz structure for poodles that is as camp as a chorus-girl line. Japanese modernist architect Kazuyo Sejima, who together with Ryue Nishizawa was awarded the Pritker Prize for architecture in 2010, has made a white cocooning bed for a bichon frise that is an extremely fluffy departure from her signature glass and steel structures.

The idea is that you download the designs and build the piece yourself . Architecture For Dogs' interactive website also features videos and detailed instructions for each design, as well as the facility for users to upload their own versions of the structures they build.

Please keep us in the loop. We'd love to see how yours turn out. For more see architecturefordogs.com - ALANNA GALLAGHER