It’s all shits and giggles until the dog giggles and shits… on the carpet

I think I've had one day in the last three weeks where Eliot has not shit on the carpet in the living room. Sigh.

It doesn't help that he also has some kind of stomach thing going on, so we're not getting solid poops either. Double sigh.

I'm currently at the point where I'm starting to wonder if the little turd is strategically shitting his way round the living room carpet, so that by the time he's done, the whole thing will effectively be clean. Twisted logic, but here we are.

So here's the thing. This is the first in a series of posts about the two absolute MUST buys nobody preps you for when you bring a puppy home. I'm on puppy number three, so they're either tried and tested, or I wish I'd had them in my life sooner.

Clean up on aisle four

Cleaning up dog poop is not fun. Least of all when it's on a carpet. And you rent.

Eliot thinks he's a smart cookie. He'll tell me he needs a poop, I'll take him outside for said poop, and he'll go "PSYCH! Just shittin' with ya." It's a lot of in/out, in/out... followed by him being a massive dick and racing round the garden because he doesn't want to come back inside. We'll do this twice, then I'll turn my back for five seconds and he's shat on the carpet. FML.

The best was one evening where he'd pooped in five places. I found the first four, cleaned up the first four, had taken the cleaning head off to empty it... only to find the fifth, right behind me. He followed that up with a chaser of going out for a wee, coming back inside, and you guessed it, weeing on the carpet too.

Thankfully, I was a smart cookie and bought a Shark StainStriker in the spring sales. It's already earned itself about ten times over, and I've only had it two weeks.

The carpet already needed a proper clean because my dearly departed Bertie was a muck magnet, but I was waiting until post-puppy phase to tackle it properly. That said, the Shark StainStriker is an absolute powerhouse. I say this as someone who already owns a Vax carpet cleaner, which is about as much use as a dirty dishcloth.

I especially love the pet cleaner attachment, which stops the pet mess from going back into the main waste water chamber. So far it's a 10/10 from me on ease of use, weight, and how it performs.

Something to clean up accidents (even when it genuinely feels like your dog is taking a protest dump in the middle of your living room) is an absolute essential. No arguments.

I bought the Shark StainStriker with my own money, this is like post 2 on a blog nobody is reading except me at the time of writing. There's no affiliation going on, just a product that does the job.

Next up: the other must-have nobody tells you about. Spoiler: it involves your puppy's guts, a faecal culture, and something that works like actual voodoo magic.