Javier Ramirez, the tile maker who made all of the decorative tiles for Vivienda's Estate, was also commissioned to make all the handmade Saltio floor pavers throughout the house. When Connie Cowden and Suzy Brown drove down to Mexico to inspect the first batch of tiles, they discovered a trail of fresh paw prints meandering through the tiles that lay drying on the floor the night before. Javier explained that the prints were made by stray dogs who frequently wandered through the covered, but open-air structure at night. He instinctively reassured them that they would not ship the “defective” tiles. It took a little convincing, but Connie and Suzy managed to convince Javier that they really wanted the authentic tiles with all the mishaps and blemishes.

Soon after their arrival, the tile layers began tiling the West Wing of the house. When they finished the wing, they came to get Suzy to inspect the beautiful floor tiles. They were indeed beautiful, but she quickly noticed that the paw prints were conspicuously absent, whereon she exclaimed, “where are all the paw prints!?” They pointed to a large stack of tiles that had been sorted out in order to avoid making any mistakes laying the defective tiles on the floors. Once again the paw prints were almost excluded because of their imperfections. From that point on, the tile layers were instructed to ignore all the flaws in the tiles, especially the ones with the paw prints! To this day, no one has ever taken a full count of all the paw prints that traipse around Vivienda's Estate. We dare you to find them all.