Cleaning Up After Your Dog

If you have a dog in your house, you know there are many messes that will have to be cleaned up sooner or later.  Here’s a roundup of some of the products you may find useful.

Shedding

The best defense against shedding is a good offense.  Bathing and grooming your dog often will cut down on the amount of fur that ends up on your carpets, couches, and floors.  However, there are very few dogs that don’t end up losing at least some fur some of the time.

To remove fur from upholstery, you might try using a damp rubber glove and simply running your gloved hand over the cushions.  There are products on the market specifically made for this problem, such as the Pledge Fabric Sweeper or the Scotch Fur Fighter.  Of course, you can also simply vacuum the couch or chairs regularly when you vacuum your carpets.

Nearly every major manufacturer makes a vacuum specifically marketed as God’s gift to the home with pets.  To help you choose between them, check out consumer reviews before you buy.

Cleaning up muddy footprints

On hard surfaces like wood, vinyl, laminate, or stone, it’s relatively easy to simply mop up muddy footprints, but what if your dog insists on visiting carpeted rooms before his or her feet dry?

Although it’s tempting to break out the scrub brush and bucket immediately, remember that patience is a virtue.  It’s much easier to clean up dried dirt than wet mud.  If you simply allow the footprints to dry, you can easily vacuum them up.

If all of the dirt doesn’t come up, you might try applying a spot carpet cleaner.  Resolve® makes a really good deep cleaning powder that dries in 20 minutes.

Cleaning up after housebreaking accidents

Housebreaking a puppy is one of the most intense times when you’ll need to keep good cleaning products handy.

The sooner you can clean up urine, the better.  Once the urine soaks into the carpet padding, you will have a very difficult time getting rid of the odor.  The ShamWow®  towel can be your best friend because it soaks up as much as twelve times its weight in fluid.

Set the towel over the urine spot and stand on it for about 30 seconds.  With any luck, you will get all of the fluid soaked up, keeping it from soaking the padding.  Follow up with a spot carpet cleaner.  Resolve® makes a number of products with what they call Odor Stop Technology.

Feces can often simply be picked up with toilet paper and flushed down the commode.  However, loose stools tend to smear and leave a stain.  You may need to follow up with a spot carpet cleaner.  Vomit can be cleaned up in the same manner – remove the solids, then scrub the stain with a good spot cleaner.

E-how offers a video detailing the clean-up of housetraining accidents.

If your dog defecates inside the house frequently in spite of routine trips outside, you might want to take a look at the type of food you are giving him or her.  Some dogs are perfectly capable of holding their stool until let outside, as long as they are not overfed or given inappropriate snacks.

Don’t forget that outdoor bowel movements should be cleaned up promptly, even in your own yard.  Feces left in the yard can seep into the ground water, as noted by the Northeast Ohio Regional Sewer District’s Pick Up Poop (PUP) campaign.

You have lots of options for poop patrol.  The easiest, although also the most expensive, is to hire a service to take care of the problem for you.  For those of us who aren’t millionaires, however, the next easiest way is to simply turn a plastic grocery bag inside out over your hand, then use it to pick up the feces.  Pull the edges of the bag right-side-out, and tie the handles securely before you discard in a regular trash can.

If you don’t want to get quite so close to the mess, you can use a shovel or a specially designed pooper scooper.  GregRobert Pet Supplies offers several different styles from which to choose.

Once you have done the scooping, the next issue becomes how to dispose of the “package”.  Although you can simply throw the feces away, they do give a rather fragrant quality to your garbage can.  Alternatives include pet waste septic systems and composters such as the Doggie Dooley.