You Get the Whole Dog

Travel Blogger 0 Comments January 25, 2007

Thanks to chainsaw woodcarver Dennis Sullivan, 62, Idaho now boasts the country’s only bed-and-breakfast in a beagle. Sullivan, who lives just outside the town of Cottonwood, pop. 900, got ambitious, moving up from creating pint-size dogs and other animals to a 30-foot-high building that looks like a floppy-eared beagle. The Idaho Statesman ventured inside: “Climb a stairway, open a door, and you’re standing in a bedroom with an adjoining bathroom in the dog’s belly. A ladder takes you to the dog’s nose.” The country once boasted many examples of “programmatic architecture” like Sullivan’s dog house. There was the pricey Brown Derby, a Los Angeles restaurant shaped like a hat, and A-framed motel rooms throughout the West that were supposed to look like tepees. But except for railroad-car-shaped diners, the style has fallen out of fashion. Sullivan and his wife, Frances Conklin, say their $88-a-night B & B is already proving a big hit with travelers. Sullivan says that might be because when you book the beagle, “You get the whole dog.”