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How to remove urine odors naturally and effectively

August 23, 2013 By [email protected]

Suppose you’re unlucky enough to have your pet pee on upholstery and carpets. In that case, you’d realize that as much as you try to blot or
wash the fabric, you could never seem to remove the smell, and even if you think you did, you’d still find your pet going back to pee at the same spot, even on easy to clean hard floors! The only thing I hate about their acute sense of smell.

And I hate that their skin seems to be allergic to everything.

You can try bleach, Dettol, and Febreze for all you want, but it’s not going to do a thorough job, and worse still, the chemicals used might cause adverse skin reactions in pets with sensitive skin. On a side note, most pets are sensitive to synthetic phenols in detergents and disinfectants, so if there’s a need to use surfactants on the floor, add a little dish soap into the water used for mopping the floor and mopping as usual. Then, add around two tablespoons of vinegar to a fresh pail of water and mop the floor again. This will neutralize the soap and, at the same time, deodorize and disinfect the floor as well!

Instructions:

If the accident is on your bed, carpet, or sofa, try to blot the fresh stain with a dry cloth and continue until you’ve removed it as much as possible.
What I like to do with soiled fabric is to wash it with regular soap first. From experience, skipping this step and going straight to deodorizing agents wouldn’t work either. Mix dish soap with water into a spray bottle and try this mixture on an inconspicuous area to ensure the fabric is colorfast. If the color doesn’t run, spray on the stained area and blot it up again. Do it a few times.
All-purpose enzyme cleaners in organic stores are usually great for removing smells, and you can spray the stain and leave it to dry. Enzyme cleaners are also usually safe on fabrics, but as a general precaution, it’s always good to spot test. If your pet goes back to pee at the same spot, repeat steps 1 & 2, and proceed to step 4.
Mix a solution of 3% Hydrogen Peroxide and baking soda and again do a spot test first. Then spray it onto the stain and let it do its work. The mixture works with the urine and releases oxygen, which cleans, deodorizes, and works like Vanish Power O2.
When the surface has dried, you may want to spray a diluted solution of white vinegar to neutralize any excess alkali and odor.
With hard floors, it’s much easier as you’d only need to wipe up the stain and spray with deodorizing agents like Enzymatic cleaner, Hydrogen Peroxide, and baking soda mix or vinegar and leave it to dry. However, if you’re using a cloth to wipe up the stain, remember to soak the cloth with any deodorizing agents afterward.

*Warning*

Whatever you do, don’t be Kiasu and add whatever you can find together, thinking that it’ll give it an extra cleaning boost. Combining Hydrogen Peroxide and vinegar, in particular, produces a potent oxidizing agent known as Peracetic acid and produces toxic fumes, which are harmful to the lungs with long-term exposure. However, spritzing one after the next would not produce any harmful byproducts. Chemistry.

Here you go, no need to be spending $15 on a small bottle of ‘urine odor removal’ or whatever from pet shops. Let me know how it’s working for you, and leave me a comment if you have any questions!

Pet Grooming: Should I shave my dog if it has skin problems?

May 6, 2013 By Sunny Lim

If your dog ever suffered from skin problems, you’d realize that sometimes it takes forever to cure. Even vets need to do some trial and error, and neither do they have any magic bullet that’ll stop the problem from resurfacing months later. This is because, as mentioned in my earlier post on chronic skin problems, skin problems can be caused by anything. As a result, not only is it torturing to the poor animals going through all that itch, it’s heartbreaking for us to see them this way and frustrating trying to find out the cause.

What seems right might not necessarily be

In our quest for a solution, we are often made to believe that shaving down the dog for the easy application of creams and observing the condition was a good idea. Although it may sound logical and a practice widely propagated by vets and groomers, just imagine for a moment you had a rash somewhere, and you ran a clipper across it. It’s the same as how scratching makes a rash worse or how shaving usually irritates our skin; clipping usually irritates the skin and if you were to shave the whole dog down, imagine the itch from their nose all the way to their tail!

Self-mutilation

And what would they do when they have that insatiable need to kill off that itch? They scratch, chew, and lick on the itch until the skin becomes red, raw, and wounded, But still, it itches, and scratching and chewing are the only ways they know how. So the vicious cycle continues until the point of self-mutilation, and we have no choice but to don the Elizabethan collar, also infamously known as the cone of shame on them.

Don’t cause unnecessary problems for yourself.

Even for dogs with perfectly normal skin, shaving too close sometimes causes redness and irritation, especially on sensitive areas like paws, throat, groin, anal region, and under the belly.

That’s why I don’t recommend customers to have their pets’ feet shaven bald for whatever reasons, be it because their pets lick their paws or because of the discolored paws from the licking. Usually, shaving only makes matters worse, and it’s more important to find the cause of the behavior rather than aggravate the problem.

If you really have to

However, if you insist that clipping is to be done, please instruct the groomer to leave at least a centimeter of their coat. During the grooming process, the shorter the cut, the smaller the blade would be used – the problem with that is the edge of the blade in contact with your pets’ skin would be sharper and heats up faster, two of the most common irritant during pet grooming.

Besides, the coat acts as a protective layer, and it’ll buffer the skin against any external irritants they’re being exposed to daily (e.g., chemicals, materials, heat, etc., which they’re allergic to). Furthermore, the coat also cushions the skin when the dog chews on or scratches itself.

And since most vets prescribe shampoos instead of topical creams, the medication would have no problem working down to the skin.

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Have questions on pet grooming? Write them down in the comments below, and I’ll be glad to answer them!

Pet Grooming: Cleaning your pets’ ears is not as dangerous as you think

April 21, 2013 By Sunny Lim

In my earlier post, I talked about how ear mite infestations are one of the most common ear problems affecting household pets in Singapore. However, no ear mite infestation can be cleared quickly without proper cleaning. This is because if there’s too much ear wax, it might interfere with the effectiveness of the medications. Although there are exceptions where some products do not need prior cleaning, or if there’s nothing wrong with your pets’ ears, regular ear cleaning is still an important part of your pets’ grooming routine to maintain proper ear health.

Ear anatomy of cats and dogs

However, I admit it’s terrifying for some, especially those unaware of the anatomy of their pets’ ears. The difference between human ears to cats and dogs is that,

unlike human ears, dogs and cats have ‘L’ shaped ear canals, which prevents us from reaching the ear drums if we just clean the observable part of the ear canal with cotton buds. A word of caution is that although it’s unlikely to damage the ear drums with cotton buds, it’s possible to push debris further down the ear canal with improper cleaning techniques.

Ear flushing

As you can see, if the ears are dirty, the debris may lodge itself in the horizontal portion of the ear canal, which we can’t reach. Therefore to be able to clean the whole length of the ear canal and an effective method would be to flush the ear with surfactants to loosen the debris and have them shake it out.

*Disclaimer* It is not recommended to flush ears that are bleeding or badly inflamed. If your pets’ ears are oozing with pus, constantly tilting their head, or experiencing pain in their ears, seek medical attention immediately.*

First, liberally fill the ear canal with a liquid based (as opposed to oil-based) ear-cleaning solution and massage the base of the ear. Feel for cartilage, and that would be their ear canal. Secondly, if you have an eye dropper, suck out the solution and repeat 2-4 times in each ear, depending on how dirty the ears are. If you don’t have an eye dropper with you, then just let them shake the dirt out. What flushing does is that it removes the bulk of the debris so that we will not be pushing the dirt further down into the ear canal and onto the eardrums when we use cotton buds later on.

Why aren’t cotton buds called Q-tips here? I love the sound of it. Q-tips.

Next, moisten a cotton bud with ear solution and, with an upward motion, clean all sides of the observable ear canal. Repeat until the ear is clear of dirt or almost there. Usually, if the ear is really dirty, it’s almost impossible to thoroughly clean the ears, keeping in mind that there are a lot of areas we can’t reach. If that’s the case, just clean as much as you can, around 4-5 times and continue tomorrow. The abrasion and ear shaking during ear cleaning causes further irritation and inflammation and will do more harm than good.

Finally, if your dog has floppy ears like Retrievers, Beagles, or Spaniels, or if your dog has lots of hair inside the ear, like Poodles, Schnauzers, or Shih Tzus, remember to apply ear powder afterward to keep them dry.

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