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" The number one question that came in (from many people!) was how to take care of dog/cat urine stains. This is probably the most-often-asked question that I get, so let&amp;#039;s review the steps for Pet Cleanup 101. Cat urine is more concentrated and stronger than dog urine because cats don&amp;#039;t drink as much water. So, it takes a little more work to deal with cat urine problems! Getting to the stain ASAP is the key to taking care of the problem and the smell! Step 1: Soak up as much liquid as possible. Use old bath towels (or a lot of paper towels!) and stand on them. Keep doing this until no more moisture comes up. Step 2: The cleaning step involves making your own solution or using one of the commercial carpet cleaners. There are very good enzyme-based pet-stain cleaners out there, and it&amp;#039;s well worth having some on hand if your pets tend to have accidents. For a good homemade cleaning solution for carpets, mix 1 teaspoon milk liquid dish-washing (not dishwasher) detergent with 8 ounces room-temperature tap water. Using a clean cloth or sponge, blot the area, working from the outside of the stain toward the center. Step 3: Rinse with clean water and blot with a clean towel. Step 4: Mix 1 ounce white vinegar with 8 ounces water and repeat the above steps. This helps remove any soap residue, and it also deodorizes. Step 5: Last, place a clean, dry towel over the area and stand on it to pull up moisture. Keep doing this until no more moisture comes up.   Many times the urine goes down through the carpet into the padding. Cleaning the carpet will not remove the urine from the padding. And, on damp or humid days, the smell will come back, as many of you said in your notes. If this is the case, you have one of two options: One, pull the carpeting up, cut out the area of padding that is stained, and replace it with new padding. You must also clean the back of the carpet with an enzyme-based pet-stain cleaner. Or, go to your pet store or veterinarian and buy an enzyme-based pet urine/stain cleaner. Some of them say to actually pour the cleaner on the carpet, allowing it to soak down into the padding, let set for a prescribed time, then blot up. I have had good luck with one or two of these products. You must follow directions exactly and be sure to blot up all the moisture. Use caution if you have wood flooring underneath.   (See, even Heloise has a pet problem once in a while!)   Here is a last-ditch suggestion if you can close off the room: Use an ozone machine in that area to try to &amp;quot;kill&amp;quot; the bacteria that are causing the smell. Do you know of any natural remedies to treat dogs for fleas? I have 12 dogs, and I would love to find a cheaper and natural remedy. The vet is so expensive. There are &amp;quot;natural&amp;quot; things you can use, but with 12 dogs it just may be better to buy the commercial products. Sometimes the natural things work on one dog and not the other, which means in your case the fleas might jump from one dog to the next. You can buy some good flea products at the pet store. Also, there are pyrethrum-based powders that do a good job. When I tried one of these powders on my dogs, it didn&amp;#039;t last as long as the monthlong products, and I had to put it on our dogs about every week or so. A thought is that you can buy many veterinary supplies directly from a farm and ranch supply store (a feed store is what we call it in Texas). Also, there are pet-supply catalogs that you can use to order many of the items that you buy from your vet. These can be acquired from a friend, a pet breeder or the Humane Society -- or go online and type &amp;quot;pet catalog&amp;quot; or &amp;quot;pet supplies&amp;quot; into the search engine. Remember, too, that you must treat the dogs, the yard and the house at the same time, and usually repeat three to four weeks later. Many people swear that brewer&amp;#039;s yeast or garlic added to your dog&amp;#039;s diet will help repel fleas. I have my daughter&amp;#039;s basset hound that she couldn&amp;#039;t keep. I give him chew bones because if he doesn&amp;#039;t have one he goes &amp;quot;over the edge&amp;quot; and chews on anything he can find. When he eats the chew bone, it leaves a large brown soiled area on the blue carpet. What is the best way to clean the area short of a carpet shampooer (which I do not own) every week? First, try to buy chewies that are light-colored. Rawhide ones usually don&amp;#039;t leave a stain, and, as a bonus, they last a long time. It might be worth it to buy a small handheld carpet cleaner if this continues to be a problem. Or, think about changing the situation \u2014 can you give the dog his chewie in a confined area, like the kitchen or den, and keep him out of the carpeted area? We put up a baby gate to keep Savvi, our miniature schnauzer, in the kitchen at night, after she became diabetic and then went blind. She has her own doggie door and can go in and out at will, sleep with us in the bedroom or visit her food bowl, but she can&amp;#039;t wander around the entire house at night. If we leave for a length of time, she is as happy as can be, and we know she is safe. My son recently brought home a puppy, and it urinated on a beautiful quilt that I keep on my bed. I cannot get the stain out. Can you please help me? You can try an enzyme-based pet-spot remover and stain product, but I would caution you to test a small area first. You can take the quilt to your dry cleaner and tell him or her what the stain is and what you have tried \u2014 and then hope for the best. As a last resort, could you replace that one area? I have two huskies (house dogs). They shed terribly. I have to vacuum every day to keep up. I brush them and try to keep up with them, but it just isn&amp;#039;t working. I heard that there are pills for shedding. Do they work? Dogs shed! And big dogs with lots of hair (like our golden retriever, John Doe \u2014 a.k.a. J.D. \u2014 who adopted us eight years ago) shed a lot, especially in the summer. Brushing is really the only way to help prevent it. We had a sweet keeshond named Sheba who showed up and adopted us many years ago \u2014 she is now in doggie heaven. Every summer we would give her a summer &amp;quot;hairdo.&amp;quot; We would have her trimmed, leaving about two inches of hair all over, except for her head and tail, which we kept full but trimmed. She looked like a lion, and we thought she looked &amp;quot;cool.&amp;quot; It is important to not trim your dogs&amp;#039; hair too short as they can actually get sunburned, and it does not make them feel any cooler because, remember, dogs don&amp;#039;t perspire like humans. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
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