Friday, October 7, 2011

Joe vs the Dog Vomit

A Study comparing the affects of Resolves, Woolite and a carpet cleaner on the vomiting abilities of one dog.

Or how I learned to stop worrying about carpet stains and go back to sleep.

For the past two years we have owned one 50 lb test subject that enjoys gobbling up anything not locked down tighter than fort knox and extruding it come the early morn if it did not pass the digestible test.

What passed next was a scramble to find the best dog vomit battler so the carpet does not remain a sickly yellow color from her overtly friendly bile.

Methods & Materials:

One Can of Woolite Heavy Traffic

One Bottle of Resolve

One Bissell Upright Carpet Cleaner

One Dog Who Refuses to Stay Out Of The Garden


Results:

After the weather started to become the perfect Essie temperature be it warming up from a toe cracking winter or cooling down from a sun stroking summer my dog finds herself spending hours outside rolling round in the grass, eating sticks, and filling her stomach with the perfect vomit material.

When she was much younger we put our trust in Resolve:
It worked okay for those puppy expanding bladder accidents but was absolute bollocks at anything bile related. I may as well have just dumped a bit of vinegar on the carpet and gone back to bed for the nothing it did.

There should be epic poems devoted to the ineffectiveness of resolve to remove a thing off my carpet.

The Upright Carpet Cleaner:

You can pry this from my cold, dead hands when it comes to cleaning up mud and grime stains from the day to day wear of owning a dog, but how would it handle the 2 AM *hork hork hork splat?*

Turns out the answer is okay. The biggest problem is the thing takes forever to go from cold storage to running. You have to fill the basin with hot water, then let it run for a minute to heat the unit up. Then one you are done you have to dump the dirty water, wind the chord up and store it back away. And who wants to mess with all that when a cooling bed is calling to you?

So that brings us to the last (and most likely solution) to our dog stomach contents problem the woolite:
If you've never felt a strange need to grab a can off of the shelves and play with it a steady foam comes out. In theory it's supposed to spray a nice fan of foam but it drizzles out more like clumps of whipped cream (Do not taste the woolite, thank you).

The downside to Woolite is that it needs good old fashioned hand and knee scrubbing. Which again, no one really wants to do when they're not entirely certain where they are or what year it is.

They sell carpet stick things that look like a broom with a spray paint can attached but I've had almost no luck with those. Shit shoots everywhere, the bristle part doesn't really dig it in much and you just wind up with slightly whiter dirt in the carpet (this is where I clutch my Bissell protectively and glare at strangers).

But I found something perfect for the inevitable bile plunge onto the surprisingly easy to stain carpet:
Okay that isn't exactly ours, it's more of a spot thing with a few different heads but apparently they don't sell it anymore. But this is the same basic idea, spray down the woolite then scrub scrub and in a minute you're back in bed grumbling about locking the garden from the dog.

Conclusions:
WHY IN THE HELL DOES A DOG ALWAYS FEEL THE NEED TO EAT CRAP AND THEN PUKE IT BACK UP AT 2 IN THE MORNING?!

1 comment:

Databob said...

Jenn and I use "The Equalizer" which I assume she gets from work, as that she works in the vet industry. We have a puppy which nothing seems to stay in for terribly long, and some of the choices she makes for food-like substance from the yard make a random appearance, sometimes while she's still in the house. Puppies - what can you say.
Anyway, all of the other stuff I used with my last dog left a slightly discoloured ring around the "cleaned" area. But this Equalizer really seems to do the trick. If you can find it from your vet probably - I'd recommend.