How to Get Dog Smells Out of a House

If you’ve noticed that your home has taken on the fragrance ‘Essence of Dog’, you may be able to grin and bear it because you love your dog!

On the flipside, your stomach may be churning at the thought of stepping into a musty, earthy-smelling house that stinks of canine at the end of a busy working day! If this is you, you’ve come to the right place. 

Find out how you get rid of the doggy smells from your house right now by reading on. Put an end to those odours before they have time to intensify! 

 

Things to Keep in Mind When Removing Dog Smells from a Home

• You’ll need a lot of patience because there isn’t a ‘one-fix’ solution that can solve your smelly issue. It will likely take time and several of the methods below to remove the stench from your abode.
• You’ll have to stay on top of the points mentioned below, or else the odours will come back!
• Make sure that any tools and cleaning products you use are pet-friendly (if you still have animals in the home).
• If you’ve recently moved into your home and it’s stinking of dog, it’s likely that these odours are aged and are well set into the property. You can utilise some of the methods below to eradicate the stench, but it may be worth calling a professional cleaner in to help you out. A professional can use different cleaning tools and solutions to tackle the whiffy problem.

How do you stop your house from smelling of dogs? Find out below!

 

How to Remove Dog Smells from Your Home

1. Clean up any doggy mess

If you’ve got a woofy stench in your home, one of the first things you should check for is dog poo, wee and vomit. As well as saliva-ridden objects!

Wee and poop can be incredibly aromatic and, if left for long periods of time, can really make a home stink!

Not to mention the fact that doggies tend to go back and wee in the same spot if their wee wasn’t cleaned effectively. Which can only mean one thing – the displeasing odour intensifies!

It’s better to clean any sort of bodily fluids and excrement away before they wreak havoc in your home.

The simplest way to clean up this kind of mess is to remove it immediately and treat the stain with an enzyme cleaner that can break through the proteins in the blemish.

You should also clean any objects and surfaces that are covered in saliva (bedding and blankets) in a washing machine with detergent.

If you remove the mess and treat the area, you’ll be able to remove the bulk of the odour.

You can then spray some air freshener (make sure it’s pet-friendly if Rover is still at home) into the air to remove the remaining smells.

Tip: Shine a black light around your home to illuminate problematic areas that you cannot see. You’ll be surprised by how much fluid shows up under the light.

 

2. Wash your dog’s stuff

A huge bulk of the canine smells you have at home will likely be in the areas where your pooch spends most of their time.

In most cases, this will be their bed and blankets. If you want to reduce the smell of hound in your home, wash your dog’s things!

By doing this, you’ll remove concentrated odours and stains from the bedding. And this will help to reduce the intense smell of dog in your property. 

In addition, you’ll also notice that your doggie’s toys and towels are a bit pongy. You can wash these items in a washing machine in most cases, and by doing this, you’ll reduce a lot of the smells in your home.

 

3. Continuously brush, hoover and wash surfaces down

It’s imperative if you have pets to clean the surfaces in your home on a regular basis as this is one way you can control shedding, general dirt and smells.

It’s also crucial that you carry out these activities when you first move into a new home, so you can clean and sanitise your abode before you move yourself and your belongings in.

Once you’ve moved in, you’ll have to keep up with these jobs to stop the scent from creeping back in!

To make sure that you clean as many doggy odours out of your home, you will need to regularly wash every surface down.

This includes hoovering the floors and curtains, dusting, cleaning the windows sills, and washing the bedding, sofas, throws, clothes and pillowcases.

In simple terms, you need to clean any surfaces that your canine comes into contact with daily/areas where a hound has obviously spent a lot of time in the past!

Here’s a quick guide for you:

• At least twice a week, you should hoover all of your floors. This will remove hair and dried dirt from them.
• At least once a week, you should clean the hard surfaces in your home (but you can increase this frequency if need be). This includes the kitchen and bathroom floor. The kitchen is most likely where your pooch eats, so make sure you clean around their food and water bowls. Otherwise, mould will start to grow on the old biscuits that have been left on the floor.
• Deodorise your carpet to remove odours from it frequently. Just make sure you use a pet-friendly product if there’s a dog in your house, and make sure the solution you use is suitable for your carpet. You can use a natural product or an off-the-shelf solution to deodorise your carpet.

 

4. Try and contain the smells to one area

It’s not always possible to eradicate every doggy smell from a home, even if you try really hard to do so.

If this is the case with you, you could try and contain the odours to a few sections within the home. For example, you could stop your pet from going upstairs.

By stopping your pal from going upstairs, they won’t be able to rub their scent onto the bedding and carpets, and they also won’t wee or poop up there. In turn, this should reduce some of the bad odours. 

Of course, you will carry some pet smells on your clothes when you go upstairs, but the aroma may not be as intense!

 

5. Open the windows to allow ventilation inside the home

Ventilation is key when it comes to removing smells from a home. So, open up the windows in your property and allow lots of fresh air to circulate around each room.

 

6. Scent your home

As well as trying the other points on this list, you could naturally scent your home with plants and flowers. And you could also strategically place scented candles, diffusers and air fresheners around the house to starve off the foul smells.

If you can, try and find an air freshener that is designed to fight pet odours around the home, like Febreze 3Volution Plug In Air Freshener.

This particular air freshener needs to be plugged into a socket, and then it releases bursts of freshness throughout your home for up to 90 days (if used on low setting).

 

7. Clean your doggy!

If you still have a dog in the house, you should clean them to wash away lingering odours from their body! You should also brush your pooch to get rid of loose stinky fur!

 

8. Use pet-specialised cleaning tools to clean your abode

It’s also worth investing in pet-friendly cleaning equipment for your home, so that you can clean your house effectively.

Most hoovers will be able to clean general dirt off the surfaces in your property. But if you have a dog or several dogs, you need to invest in a hoover that is designed for homes with pets.

These kinds of vacuum cleaners can handle shedding better because they tend to come with different brush heads that are armed with bristles that are ready to tackle hairy messes.

Plus, pet-friendly vacs come with attachments that are designed to tease pet-related grime and aromas from upholstery and crevices.

By using the right kind of machine to maintain your home, you’ll end up with a better overall clean.

 

9. Clean your cleaning tools!

In addition to using more suitable cleaning tools, you also need to wash your cleaning equipment so that it doesn’t smell of dog and harbour germs.

Any tools you use, from hoovers to brushes and from washing machines to mops, will be contaminated with doggy odours.

If you don’t maintain your tools, they’ll become laden with bacteria and aromas, and these foul scents will work their way around your home as you continue to clean. It’s crucial that you maintain your equipment.

For example, vacuum cleaners that have been used to hoover scent and hair-filled carpets will have whiffy dust sacks/canisters by the end of a cleaning session.

If the dirty contents are left in the machine, it can really start to stink! Emptying containers/dust sacks and either cleaning or replacing them is the way forward.

Similarly, mop heads that have been used to mop up dog food and perhaps pee-pee need to be cleared and sanitised.

If not, they’ll become a haven for bacteria, incredibly unhygienic, and of course, smelly! It would be unwise to use this filth-ridden mop to clean other floors in your home.

Tip: Use scented discs like these to make your hoover smell nice! Discs and other scented items that can be slotted into vacuum cleaners can leave a lovely fragrant smell behind as you hoover.

 

10. Call a professional out to help you

Sometimes it doesn’t matter how well you maintain your home (new or old) or how much you clean your pet, you just can’t get rid of the doggy smell in your house. If this is the case, it’s time to call a professional cleaner to help you out.

A professional has access to different cleaning solutions and tools that you may not have at home. In turn, they can use this specialised equipment to deal with the stinky problem at hand.

They’ll be able to treat aged stains, get up and clean higher surfaces, and use tools to penetrate deep crevices that are filled with doggy odours, for example!

 

11. Replace items

Don’t be afraid to replace extra stinky items in your home if you cannot clean and remove the dog smell from them. 

For example, if your pup has peed on a rug and continues to do so (even though you’ve cleaned the area), it may be best to remove the mat and replace it with a new unscented one!

In addition, if you’ve just moved into a stinky house and need to get rid of the canine smell, it may be easier for you to take out certain items, like carpets, and replace them with new ones instead of trying to clean them.

To reinforce this point, if you have pets moving into your new abode, it would be wise to replace the contaminated surfaces in the property because your buddies might start weeing and marking the odour-filled areas. These would be extra problems for you to manage!

In this case, it would be better to put an end to any potential issues before they’ve had a chance to begin.

 

How Long Does Dog Smell Last in a House?

Dog smells can last months to years in a house. There isn’t an exact timescale!

If you live with canines, there’ll always be some sort of dog scent in the house, no matter how much you clean everything.

If you don’t have a pup, but you’ve moved into a house that did have dogs in it, you could be waiting a while for the smell to disappear.

You should, however, make every effort to clean the house from top to bottom, ensure there’s sufficient ventilation in the abode, replace troubling pieces, and use scented items to make your home fragrant during this time.