Tips to Celebrating Pet Adoption Month with a New Pet

June is the start of summer and is the official National Pet Adoption Month. What a better way than to start with adopting a pet. Pets can make a huge difference in your life, often improving your health, lifestyle and mood. They just make us happy.

However, having a dog or cat, like having a child, means your flooring stands to see increased traffic and possibly some stains over time. You can take steps to prevent stains, like house-training your animals from the time they arrive home. Here are some tips housetraining tips to help with integrating your new pet into your household:

1. Schedule your dog’s feedings

• Get your dog on scheduled feedings rather than free feeding. Eating all day = pooping all day:
  • Your veterinarian can help you determine the appropriate amount of food your dog needs and the number of feedings per day.
  • Remove any uneaten food after 20 minutes.
  • Do not offer the dog more food until the next scheduled meal.
  • Stick to it! The dog should be eating on schedule within one to four meals.

2. Understand normal dog behavior

• When an accident happens, never rub a dog’s nose in urine or feces, or punish a dog for an “accident.” This will teach your dog to fear you, and he may hide when he has to “go.”
• It is not instinctive for dogs to relieve themselves outside; it is only natural for them to not go where they sleep. Everyplace else is fair game.
• You must be patient. Regardless of whether you have recently adopted a puppy or an adult, the dog will not automatically understand the routine in your house or know where the door is. It is up to you to train your dog.

3. Clean up messes thoroughly

Even if you do everything right when you bring a new dog into your household, an occasional accident may still happen. It’s a lot of “new” – new family, new environment, new routine. If your new pet does have an accident, it’s important to remember a few things:

• Dogs are attracted to return to spots where they urinated/defecated previously.
• If you clean up just a little, the dog will be attracted to “refresh” the spot. If you clean thoroughly, there will be no attraction to go there again.
• Pet urine is very difficult to get out, and standard household cleansers don’t cut it because it penetrates the fibers and contaminates both the carpet and the floor underneath. The good news is Chem-Dry specializes in pet urine removal. Chem-Dry can identify pet accidents in your home and eliminate pet urine odors from your carpets and rugs by applying our revolutionary cleaning product P.U.R.T.® (Pet Urine Removal Treatment).  P.U.R.T. contacts the source of the odor and then immediately begins a chemical reaction that destroys the urine odor. It’s shown excellent results on even the most severe urine damage.

4. How to prevent future accidents

Once you have handled getting any accidents cleaned professionally, how do you prevent future ones? It comes down to figuring out the why, really. There are a few reasons your pet could be having accidents:

• They can smell past accidents, which makes it comfortable to continue having accidents.
• They don’t have a personal space.
• They’re left alone for too long or get nervous.
• With older dogs, sometimes their bladders are not functioning as well as they used to.

You should do the best you can to keep an eye on your dogs and take them out for potty breaks regularly to avoid accidents. You can even install a doggy door and train them how to use it. Get your backyard fenced in so they can come in and out as they please. And of course, the more you train them to know where to go and where not to go, the less likely accidents will happen.

Keep Chem-Dry in mind when you bring your new pet home so you can love on your new family member and leave the pet accidents to us We think it's the best carpet cleaner for pet urine and, when you see the results, we know you will too.