Pets and carpets can be a tricky combination. They add comfort and warmth to your life, but one of them can turn the other one into an awful mess if you aren’t careful. No matter how well-trained your precious pet may be, they’re bound to make an accident at some point on your carpet.
We know how to remove pet odors at Dr. Chem-Dry Carpet & Tile Cleaning. Here’s a few tips you can keep in mind to help you get your carpets smelling oh-so-fresh again when they end up catching a bad case of pet odors.
Related: Spot Cleaning Treatment 101
Isolate & Contain
The first step to removing pet odors is to remove the stains that are causing the odors. So long as a part of your carpet is soiled, your pet will continue to relieve themselves on it. They’ll smell where they marked their spot and will return to it. It’s why cleaning pet stains and odors is so important: The longer they hang around the greater the chances are that your beloved pets will make even more stains and odors you’ll have to deal with later.
Find where they’ve made a stain and clean it up. If the mess is fresh you should clean it up immediately: A stain is always easiest to clean when it’s still fresh. Soak up the stains with layers of paper towels. If you have a designated litter box or area where your pet is allowed to relieve themselves, you could place the used towels there afterwards for a little bit to attract them over to their spot and encourage them to use it. This trick only works in areas that don’t trap odors, though, so be careful before you try this house-training tip out.
Avoid using any harsh cleaning agents to take care of the stain. You can use a cleaning mixture of warm water and seltzer water. You want to stay away from using any type of vinegar, because it’s an old wives tale that the vinegar actually helps with the odor and the stain. It might mask the odor with the smell of vinegar for a while, but people call us all the time saying the tried to use vinegar on the urine stain and it didn’t work. Also if the pet urine in the carpet is slightly on the acidic side, then adding vinegar to the stain, which is also acidic, could discolor your carpet.. Definitely stay away from soaps or detergents as well. Soaps and most store bought stain removal products may make the stain look better for a while, but the soaps will cause the stain to attract new soil making the stain seem like it reappeared. Make sure you don’t leave your carpet wet for long: That could encourage the growth of mildew or mold.
Once you’ve cleaned the stain, check around to make sure that the mess hasn’t spread to any other parts of your carpets. Older pet stains can sometimes blend into the carpet and be heard to spot. Follow your nose! And if you don’t smell anything, consider investing in a simple black light to find the stains (note: not all black lights are created equal). All you have to do is turn off the lights before using the black light. You can mark the areas you find with the black light by tearing a piece of paper and marking the area. Here’s the tricky part, the stain that you see with the black light is only the tip of the iceberg (see our illustration below).
Deep Cleaning
If the odor persists, it’s likely that the stain has soaked deep into the carpet. It’s at this point where you’ll want to give us a call. We can use our carbonating cleaning method to safely and quickly clean your carpets and also rinse out the urine. It’s essential that you get pet stains cleaned quickly because you don’t want the stain to travel down and touch the backing of your carpet.
Once the carpet has been given a thorough professional cleaning, a pet odor neutralizer will be placed to restore your carpet back to its natural state. Our new pet odor removal product is 99.9% effective at removing the urine odor.
Related: Replacing Carpet With Tile: What You Need To Know
Need help getting your carpets odor-free? Give Dr. Chem-Dry Carpet & Tile Cleaning a call at 602-243-6379.
