Pet owners and rug cleaning

Pets are great companions and very lovable, but they can wreak havoc on the rugs, either because they are not yet toilet trained or because they track in debris and mud. Urine accidents are common in houses with indoor pets, and truth been told, it is a very difficult stain to remove without the help of a professional rug cleaner as it penetrates the rug’s fibers and soak through to the underneath. And, every time there is moisture in the air, the dried stain releases the odour again and again.

Using store-bought cleaners can damage your rug, and you may as well end up with a bleached rug with unattractive, uneven spots of cleaned rug, still smelling awful.

Besides odour, pet urine, feces, and vomit stains are permanent most of the times if they are left untreated for a while. Mind that all stripping and bleaching agents can cause significant damage to your rug’s fibers and any stain removal attempt should be done with extreme caution if you don’t want to make things worse.

Also, if a rug is exposed to repeated urine stains, you can expect it to start bleeding, meaning loose its colour (colour just washes away), due to the fact that pet urine stains turn from acidic to alkaline that cause significant damage to acid rug dyes. In addition, the cotton foundation fibers begin to become rotten with long-term exposure to pet urine, and this is something that cannot be reversed. The same applies to the cases where there are plants on top of the urine-stained rugs. The rugs slowly become rotten, leaving you with a rug with large holes. So, always inspect the back of the rug to spot any signs of dry rot (i.e. stiffness and/or dark mildew), especially if you have a pet that puddles in the same area of your rug repeatedly.

Pet owners and rug cleaning