Dog owners will know the importance of regular, thorough vacuuming. And yet as a dog owner, you probably know that this isn't always going to be enough. Investing in a powerful vacuum cleaner is a savvy move when you share your home with dogs, and this will generally be sufficient when it comes to picking up dog hair and the general dirt and debris that your dog is likely to bring inside. It can also be prudent to arrange for professional carpet cleaning from time-to-time in order to banish that mess that you can't see, and yet might be lurking in your carpets. This is particularly true if your dog is prone to having accidents inside. While you might blot the stain and then possibly deodorise, it's not a pleasant thought to think that remnants of dog urine are still in your carpets. So you just rent a carpet steam cleaner and give your carpets a once-over? Sometimes this will do the trick, but sometimes a more precise approach is required.

The Risks of Steam Cleaning

The danger with steam cleaning your carpets to remove dog urine is that you will make the problem worse. But how is this possible? If your carpets are synthetic or even a synthetic blend, the heat from the steam cleaner could potentially blend the proteins in the dry dog urine into the synthetic fibres, essentially making the stain permanent. This could be worse if your dog has excessive protein in their urine. This could even reactivate the odour, fusing it with the very fibres of the carpet.

A Precise Approach

This is why a precise, often multi-faceted approach can be advisable when you periodically need to clean your carpets to get rid of the lingering traces left by your dog. Professional carpet cleaning can be the best way to achieve this, since they will have a variety of cleaning products and machines for an exhaustive job all in one session, meaning you won't need to rent or buy the individual components yourself. In order to avoid bonding the urine to your carpets, they will generally use a specific approach.

• Any carpets known to have pet urine might simply be shampooed and left to dry so that the urine is lifted out of the fibres as part of the shampooing process instead of being treated with heat.

• Steam cleaning might also be utilised, though on a low heat with repeated applications, as opposed to a single treatment on a high heat setting.

So while you might want to remove that lingering dog urine from your carpets, the wrong approach can result in making the problem something more permanent.