No matter how much you accident-proof your pad by lifting up the rugs, covering the furniture, and doing your best to corral the laundry, you can still count on the occasional accident while housetraining a puppy. It’s very important to clean any soiled area thoroughly, because otherwise puppy’s exquisitely sensitive nose will lead him right back there to re-soil it over and over again.
Why is that? "Where puppies pee is very important to them," explains William Berloni, director of behavior at the Humane Society of New York. "It’s instinctive: When they find a place to relieve themselves that feels safe, with no predators around, they’re going to go back to that spot for familiarity and security."
But removing the scent from your carpet or rug is no easy task because, Berloni explains, "dogs can smell molecules, and they recognize their own scent." Conventional wisdom holds that good old-fashioned vinegar, dabbed on the area as soon as possible after it becomes soiled, does the trick. But vinegar, as you’ll learn by cleaning up after as many puppies as the pros have, is really no match for puppy pee-pee.
Fortunately, urine-cleaning technology has come a long way. Dog odor removal products such as Get Serious! and Simple Solution work well to remove the scent of number two as well as number one; meanwhile, Berloni is a fan of Nature’s Miracle "because it changes the chemical composition of the urine, breaking it down into something the puppy doesn’t recognize."
And if he can’t recognize it, he won’t bother to re-mark it. If you can’t find exactly where your puppy has marked, pull out a special urine-finding black light and treat that spot before puppy hits it again.
