Removing Pet Odors from Your Apartment

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Removing Pet Odors from Your Apartment

aptsherpa · Aug 13, 2007

Owning a pet is a wonderful thing. Dogs provide unconditional love and cats are comforting companions. Studies have shown that people who own pets live longer and enjoy lower levels of stress. Unless, of course, your apartment smells strongly of your furry best friend. If your pet is accident prone (you know what we mean), you can forget about reducing your stress. Luckily, your apartment doesn’t have to suffer with you. Here are some tips for getting rid of odors and some advice to keep accidents from happening in the future.

Find the source of the stink. You’ve got to identify the problem before you fix it. Pets can stink up an apartment in so many ways. If your apartment smells like urine or feces, at least you know what you’re dealing with. Sometimes the smell is much less distinct so you’ll have to find the source. Has your dog or cat recently acquired an unusual odor? The smaller the apartment, the more pervasive the smell of your stinky pet will be. If your pet goes outside, supervise it closely to make sure it isn’t rolling, playing or sleeping in something you don’t want brought into your house. If you’re sure the smell isn’t coming from something the pet is tracking into the house, a bath and good brushing may eliminate the odor. If this doesn’t work, a medical problem may be to blame. Body odor isn’t necessarily the sign of a serious problem, but you don’t want to wait to find out. Take your pet to the veterinarian as soon as possible.

Take care of accidents. Even if you’re sure an accident has occurred, you may not know exactly where the problem is located. To find the source, look under tables and chairs, in crawl spots under dressers and shelves, and in closets. If your nose and eyes can’t help but the smell remains, you can use a black light. Under a black light, you’ll be able to see urine stains, both older and recent ones. To use the black light properly, turn off all the lights, draw the shades, or perform your search when it’s dark outside.

If the problem spot is on the carpet or a piece of upholstered furniture, test the spot with a paper towel to see if it is still wet. If it hasn’t dried yet, use a thick pile of paper towels, newspapers, or rags to mop up as much liquid as possible. Stand on the towels or rags to force the liquid out of the carpet (yes, it sounds gross). Once you’ve dried the surface as much as you can, rinse with cold water. Saturate the carpet and then blot the area again with towels, rags or paper. Repeat until the stain is no longer visible and the smell has abated. In the case of urine stains, avoid the use of chemical cleaners. In some cases, the cleaners bind to proteins in urine, permanently fixing the stain in your carpet or upholstery. The same thing goes for steam cleaners, which can permanently set these kinds of stains.

If an odor still remains, an odor control product like Febreze can help eliminate cat and dog urine odors. Because many cleaning supplies are toxic to pets, check labels and bottles to make sure products are safe for animals. Many companies make products that remove pet odors and are safe and non-toxic, and they can usually be found at your local pet store or grocer. If these products don’t help remove odors from the carpet, urine may have soaked down to the layer of padding under the carpet. In this case, you’ll have to take up the carpet in this section and put down a new layer of padding.

Make sure it doesn’t happen again. As you work on getting rid of the smell, let your animal watch. This will help dogs and cats understand that you don’t want them to use the house as a personal toilet. Make sure to treat every problem area in the apartment. If you leave a spot untreated, the animal may view this as an acceptable place to relieve itself next time around. If a certain spot has been the scene of several accidents, make the area an unappealing place to go in the future. You can place double-sided tape on the carpet, spray the area with cologne, or leave cotton balls soaked in citrus oils nearby. These smells and sensations are unpleasant to pets and prompt them to avoid the area in the future.

If your pet is housebroken and accidents continue to be a problem, see your vet. Dogs and cats can get urinary tract infections and other conditions that make it hard for them to wait. Of course, the fault could lie with you and not with your pet. Make sure dogs can go out regularly and often and that cat litter boxes are regularly changed.

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