Removing Pet Odors from Your Apartment

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.

I manage apartments and found a great new product that blew me away on how well it worked. I had one tenant that was a chain smoker, and another tenant who had a cat and a dog. In both cases I had tried so many different products, and nothing delivered.
Then I was referred to a website called BiocideSystems.com. They have a product called Room shocker, which will completely eliminate any severe odors and also decontaminate and disinfect at the same time. It works so well, I bought a case. I also recommend it to renters. When they vacate an apartment, it helps in getting your security back. It leaves the apartment smelling crisp and clean

i am looking for an apartment with all hard floors. i have had carpet and have had pets. i have two small dogs and accidents are all but unavoidable sometimes. i did however find an amazing cleaner. its called fabuloso and it is a purple multi purpose cleaner that works really well at dispelling puppy smells on hard floors.

I'm about to move into another apartment in the same complex.

The carpet in the unit I'm moving to smells like dog feces. They say they will treat the carpet.

Should I and can I insist on new carpet?

If you have carpeting and happen to own a wet-and-dry vacuum, it can be helpful to "suck up" as much of the moisture/liquid you can before trying to blot (which can tend to push the problem deeper into the carpet/pad). Also, to "rinse" the carpet, you can spray water (quite a lot actually) from a squirt bottle just in front of the wet-and-dry vacuum nozzle as you move the nozzle across the soiled area. This is sort of a poor man's carpet cleaner for small areas and you can usually get the carpet nearly dry if you take the time.

However, these techniques probably won't do much to help if the pad has become soaked through.

Oh, and it can leave the vacuum a bit gross - consider how/where you're going to clean it before you use it to suck up bad stuff.

Obviously use ONLY a wet-and-dry vacuum for this and follow all the vacuum manufacturer's instructions.

Also, to avoid additional carpet damage, use good judgment. Use only on carpets in sufficiently good shape and of appropriate materials (for example, this might be a bad thing to try if you are un/lucky enough to have wool carpets). Also don't use a vacuum that is too powerful and don't overclean.

I have to agree with the posting above where he mentioned that having your pet watch you clean wont work. Just like he mentioned above your pet will just think your playing or just completey ignore you.

Sorry, but your pet watching you clean will not register. They may even think you want to play, especially if you're on your hands and knees on the carpet.

Covering the urine smell with a fragrance doesn't work, it needs to be neutralized. For urine, the best is a commercial enzyme product available at most large pet stores.

If it's the carpet, make certain you thoroughly soak the spot down to the floor so the smell is completely removed. Covering the smell with a fragrance doesn't work, it needs to be neutralized. Using a black light also available at the pet store is a great thing to have on hand. It really does show up the spots you can't see.

Oh yes, never ever use ammonia it's one of the elements of urine and will only attract the animal back to the same spot.