See Spot.
See Spot Shower.

Pam Uglietta loves the extra shower in the $3 million Mediterranean-style house that she and her husband bought last year in Naples, Fla. The open-stall shower has travertine-tiled walls, a tumbled-stone floor and a tiled lip that keeps the water in the stall. There's no shower curtain to guard against the spray that hits the walls after an invigorating post-shower shake, but that's OK -- it's only the laundry room, and the shower is for Ms. Uglietta's Cavalier King Charles Spaniels, Courtney and Dylan.

The latest design wrinkle in luxury-home laundry rooms? Pet showers. These custom-designed enclosures have become a point of competition in the dog-eat-dog world of high-end home building. McGarvey Custom Homes, which built Ms. Uglietta's pet shower, has done 20 others in the past year, says Dan Gerner, a spokesman for the company. Another builder in Naples, Fla., London Bay Homes, offers pet showers at $4,000 a pop featuring nine-foot-high ceilings. In the past year, says London Bay's President Mark Wilson, 12 out of 20 custom-home clients have chosen the pet showers.

It's one of the latest examples of extreme pet pampering, which already has given us mink coats for dogs and feathered daybeds for cats. According to the American Pet Products Manufacturers Association, owners in the U.S. will spend an estimated $35.9 billion on their pets this year, up 4% from last year. The trade group estimates that owners will spend $2.4 billion on grooming and boarding this year, up from $2.3 billion in 2004.

One of the first pet showers to gain notice was in a 2003 model home in Tallahassee, Fla., sponsored by Southern Living magazine. After the exhibit, the builder, St. Joe Towns & Resorts (then called Arvida) of Jacksonville, Fla., expanded its shower to 3 feet by 6 feet, made it accessible from inside or outside and included it in all of its $1-million-plus homes. In West End, N.C., this year, McLendon Hills Construction Company put a pet shower in its $1.59 million "idea house."

Pet showers eliminate the hassle of taking dogs to be groomed, homeowners say. Ms. Uglietta's only complaint is that her shower's hand-held fixture is installed three feet off the ground, so she has to crouch when she uses it. The dogs, she says, prefer the new arrangement to being lifted into the laundry-room sink. "They're not as scared because they're not up high," she says.

Older homes are adding pet spas too. In Salt Lake City, Dennis and Polly Coleman recently spent $100,000 remodeling the basement of their 65-year-old house, budgeting $4,000 for a tiled pet shower for their 115-pound bullmastiff, Jasmine. "She reeked," Ms. Coleman says. Previously terrified of being hauled into the tub, Jasmine wags her way into the shower, Ms. Coleman says. Meanwhile, Jasmine's companion, a 10-year-old spaniel named James, still goes to the groomer because his fur clogs the drain. But Ms. Coleman says James seems jealous. "Whenever we lather Jasmine up, he sits outside the door and whines."

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