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2001-08-10 | 7:21 p.m.

Well, after getting my ninth or tenth Google hit for "dog peed in bed," I think it's time I offered some advice to people with incontinent dogs.

Okay, I am going to write this from memory, so if you do your own research, you may find out I'm full of shit. I don't care. I'm not getting paid for this.

Urine is a tough stain. All the tough stains contain proteins. Blood, chocolate, urine, grass, vomit. To really get rid of these stains/odors, you have to break them down with enzymes. Especially pet urine, because the animals will come back and pee in the same place again. They smell their urine. You can try to cover it up with all the perfumes in the world, but they'll still smell it until you neutralize it chemically.

That means you must completely saturate a urine stain in the expensive enzyme-based urine stain cleaning product of your choice. Read the label and look for lots of boasting about enzymes. Saturating the stain when you have a lot of bedding to clean and you just want to throw it all in the washer, instead of fussing over it, or when you have to try to saturate a mattress, which seems sort of impossible. But there's just no way around it. You have to do it.

If you don't do it right, you will take your sheets out of the dryer and they will smell like hot piss. If that bothers you, saturate the stain until you can't smell it. If the animal goes back to it, that means you didn't get it all and you have to do it again.

First, of course, you'll want to sop up the excess right away, and you can use a little soap and water to scrub and clean the area, but then you'll have to sop that up with water, too. (Be super careful with Oriental rugs because some of them, particularly the good ones, aren't colorfast. Test a small area first.) If you're dealing with a mattress or a rug, once you add the enzymes you won't want to rinse it. Just leave it on there to dry. Follow the directions on the product.

Now you may be thinking, Oh yuck, I don't want to have a mattress wet with stain remover!! That sort of thinking won't help you. It's stain remover or piss for you, my dear. Choose the stain remover.

I have tried a number of stain removers. I liked Kids and Pets (or is it Pets and Kids?), which has a citrus smell that I found pleasant. I also like OxiClean. But I will use whatever is readily available and/or cheapest, often in combination. I put some bedding in a large bucket and just poured a whole bottle of that stuff on top. (Yes, I hate spending money that way, but consider the alternative.) Then I let it soak overnight. Then washed it in even more of the stuff, turning the washer off for a few hours to let it soak further, plus Febreze Clean Wash on top for good measure. I also use chlorine bleach whenever possible.

Next comes the retraining. If your dog is old and incontinent like mine, you have to keep that dog off your bed, couch, rug FOREVERMORE. If that makes you feel sad, do more stain removal until the reality sinks in (like I did). You have to learn to close the bedroom door every time. Put objects on the furniture to discourage your pet from climbing up. (We've used laundry baskets, a stroller, etc.) Set aside the most appropriate area for your dog to sleep and try to confine them to it as much as possible. I bought a SleePeeTime Bed for Daisy, which is a special design for dogs with this problem featuring a mesh screen over a drip pan. It took a little getting used to, but she will sleep on it. Some people use a natural fleece blanket in combination with the SleePeeTime Bed because it doesn't seem soft enough by itself. It does have a soft bumper around the backside. I didn't go for a fleece blanket myself because all I could think was oh great, more stain removal.

Thus endeth the lecture on pet stains. I may revise it to include removing stains from hardwood floors sometime if I get really ambitious.

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