How to Get Pet Urine Smell Out of Carpet

by Hailey Hudson

Puppies are adorable — but life with a new pet isn’t all sunshine and rainbows. Whether you’re housetraining a puppy, dealing with a stubborn cat or caring for an aging dog, every pet owner will most likely have to deal with the smell of pet urine in their carpet at some point. Anyone who has already dealt with it knows it can be a feat to eliminate the odor completely. So what can you do to finally and fully get the urine smell out of your carpet? Here’s what to know about how you can make your carpet sparkle. 

Why Traditional Products and Commercial Cleaners Can Fall Short

Getting pet urine smells and stains out of your carpet is a tall order. Many carpet cleaning products fall short, leaving bad odors or pale yellow stains behind, the still-visible-when-light-hits-them-just-right kind of stains. And if you aren’t sure how to use the products, you might make the issue worse instead of better. Picking the wrong products or equipment (such as a cleaning solution that’s not specifically designed to target urine) or misusing it (using too little or too much) could result in worse stains and odors or damage to your carpet.

In many cases, commercial carpet cleaning can even make the problem worse. Both water and the ammonia in many conventional cleaning solutions professional cleaners use can cause the bacteria in urine to reactivate, increasing that pungent smell. It can also spread the stain out to cover a larger area, worsening the problem rather than getting to the root cause. 

How Skout’s Honor Can Help

Here’s what we know: Many carpet cleaning products don’t work, and commercial carpet cleaning can be a risky choice. The best option to get dog or cat urine out of your carpet is by using a specifically formulated product for the job. Skout’s Honor Urine Destroyer and Carpet Machine Solution both attack stains and odors at the molecular level. They’re specially designed to break down urine stains and smells so your carpet will smell fresh and clean when you’re done, not like urine undertones masked by fresh flowers.

How to Clean Your Carpet

For stains covering a large area, do your best to spot treat with Urine Destroyer first. Then pour Skout’s Honor carpet cleaning solution into your carpet cleaning machine. Follow the directions on the device, which usually involves moving the machine back and forth as if you were vacuuming. If you’re working with a more minor stain, use the Urine Destroyer for spot treatment; saturate the stain with the solution, wait five minutes, and then use paper towels to remove any excess moisture.  

It’s essential to clean your carpet as soon as possible after you notice a stain. If you don’t address the stain quickly, it can sink deep into the underlay of the carpet, making it almost impossible to remove, and in some cases, you may need to replace the padding of your carpet. 

Removing stains and odors from your carpet is not the dreamiest part of pet ownership. But with Skout’s Honor stain and odor solutions, and the right know-how in hand, you’ll be prepared to keep your carpet looking brand new. 

Hailey Hudson is a full-time freelance writer and content marketer based out of Atlanta, Georgia, where her cat acts as her co-worker and supervisor. She writes about pet-based topics for clients such as PetFirst Pet Insurance, Chewy and Pet Product News.

Sources:

The Spruce Pets - How to Clean Puppy Pee Stains