Well, wood will not hold up perfectly, but it's really not too bad either. I have a 75 lb Pit Bull who is nothing but a big puppy. She is very obediant though and has learned that getting really crazy in the house is not allowed. She's a great dog, but she does scratch the floor. My other two dogs don't contribute to the floor damage...they are 3 lbs and 7 lbs. My floors are quartersawn white oak, finished with waterlox and no stain. Because of the light color, it does not show dirt and scratches too bad. And because of the waterlox finish, any deep scratches are very easy to spot repair. Other finishes can't be easily touched up but waterlox can which is why I chose it. But that being said.....I accepted the fact that Baily was going to damage my floors and I don't get upset about the scratches. Even with scratches, the floor looks great and is easy to maintain.

Don't understand why tile would be several inches above the threshold but wood or another material would not. Sounds like the kitchen subfloor is higher than the rest of the house.

We have honed travertine with our four dogs (all well over 100 pounds), and it has held up extraordinarily well. It's indestructible, and the color and variations don't show anything.

If you do go with wood, choose a medium to medium-light stain color. Darker stains seem to show scratches and dog hair much worse.

Here's our floor with some of our critters enjoying the cool stone....

We have two dogs - a 75 lb greyhound (Mayhem) and a 35 lb norwegian elkhound mix (Chaos). Chaos is the energy ball, partly because she's younger, and partly because she just doesn't know how to sit still. ;) She is forever skittering around corners, on the run to bark at the squirrels, mail guy, or go outside.

We put in a hickory wood floor with a natural stain. It's very hard on the Janka scale (and we did not want to go with an exotic wood because of the environmental concerns around Amazon forests, etc.). The light colour is also fabulous for not looking dirty/dusty right after cleaning. It camouflages both Mayhem's dark hair (undercoat is grey) and Chaos' white/cream thick undercoat.

We had them put in a little over a year ago and so far they are doing really well. There are some tiny scratches that you can see if you look at it on an angle and the light hits it just right. But I think those are just in the top varnish level, not the actual wood.

A couple of pictures, before cabinets (after passing Chaos-inspection, lol):

After cabinets:

I have oak hardwoods in my kitchen area which gets tons of traffic from DH (who always fails to remove his shoes before trodding on the hardwood) and from two 80lb golden retrievers. Yes, there are scratches, but in general you only see them when the light hits the floor in a certain way or you see it from an angle. The floor itself is almost the exact same color as their topcoat (reddish orange).

We're replacing our kitchen flooring and the rest of the floors in the first floor (carpet) with natural unstained maple. The thought being that 1 - relatively hard, similar to oak, 2 - light colored hiding dust/hair etc. 3 - naturally finished so any scratches aren't getting below any sort of stained layer.

My mom had parquet floors in her house with FIVE large dogs (80 pounds+). She pulled up the parquet when it just got too damaged, and stained the concrete below. Works well in their usonian style home.

Thanks---lots of good ideas! @neilaz, what I've been told (though it may not be true?) is that ceramic tile needs to sit on a thicker mortar bed (which is certainly what the current tile, circa early 1990s, is on) to be perfectly level and prevent cracking in our older house that settles and shifts unless we replace our subfloor with something like concrete---which we don't want to deal with---but that this isn't true for other materials. (I have absolutely no clue if this is correct, as we're new to this world!) We could definitely look at tile provided the tile plus the mortar wouldn't be higher than a layer of hardwood. (The subfloors throughout the house are the same level, but everywhere but kitchen and bathroom, there is the layer of oak on top of the fir.) We have a swinging door into the kitchen that doesn't work right now because of the existing tile, so that's one reason leveling out the threshold is particularly important.

The most bulletproof floor you could install, especially if there's the occasional "accident" would be unglazed porcelain with epoxy grout. They could sit there and do a "four claw burnout" and not bother it, and the epoxy grout won't allow any liquids (or solids, for that matter) to soak in, so you don't have to worry about absorbsion at all.

I think you're right about the height difference. When our tile floor was put down in the Kitchen, PR, and Foyer (b/c of our dogs, btw), the tile installer put down a layer of hardi-backer b/f laying the tile.

When my DH removed the carpet and installed an engineered Brazilian Cherry floor in the DR, he had to lay down a layer of plywood to raise the floor so the DR's finished floor height would match the kitchen's finished floor height.

We have two standard poodles (40 & 55 pounds). They are very active (especially the female) and are always scrabbling around corners, etc. In less than a year, they had badly scratched our vinyl kitchen & foyer floors. The vinyl was installed in 1995 and was the "top of the line" for wear & tear at the time (but, that was almost 15 years ago!) When we remodeled, we discussed many flooring types but decided on tile for the area the dogs seemed to use/scratch up the most. We were also considering putting hardwood in the rest of the first floor...but that was eliminated due to budget.

However, since our DR is now are main eating area, we knew the carpet could not stay...so we installed the engineered wood for the DR until such time as we could afford the 10K or more it would cost for the entire first floor (minus the Kitchen, Foyer, & PR).

Results?

The tile floor has held up very well...no scratches whatsoever! Yes, I'm starting to find that it is hard to stand on for hours at a time, but it's wonderfully cool in the summer!

The engineered wood floor, OTOH, is already pretty badly scratched b/c of the dogs careening around the corner from the LR or Library/Office into the DR & then kitchen. But, as others have mentioned, the scratches aren't that noticeable unless there's bright sunlight and you're looking at the floor from the right angle.

One thing...it seems to me that I read somewhere that often scratches in hardwood floors are actually scratches in the finish, not the wood. So, maybe you should be asking what hardwood finishes seem to hold up the best...

There is a relatively new product called Red Guard that is put out by Custom Products. It goes down on your sub-floor and is about as thick as a credit card, over that goes the thin set and then the tile. The Red Guard stays somewhat flexible and stops cracking especially in our earthquake state of California. There is no need for a heavy mortar base any more so find an installer who is up to date on newer products.

Find a beautiful porcelain tile, use the epoxy grout and you'll be set for the next 20 years at least.

Here is a link that might be useful: Artfiredearthstonetiles