Sunday Special Product Review

I have a very bad dog.  He is a horrible person who gets by on his good looks.  Why is he so horrible?  Well, he thinks he's a boss, first of all, and secondly and more importantly, he pees on everything in his path. 

Bastard.

So, the peeing thing has been an issue for the entire 3.5 years that Ham and I have been together; he's never stopped marking, even though he was neutered as a puppy.  His favorite things to mark tend to include my laundry and also the corners of anything touching the floor in any room in anybody's house.  But, only since moving into my new apartment has he decided to take up the new habit of peeing on my bed.  And I don't mean hiking his leg and peeing on the foot of the bed... I'm talking about him getting on top of the bed, squatting like a little bitch, and leaving an incredible puddle that soaks my bedding, not to mention my memory foam mattress topper.  And this topper is the only thing that makes my 30-year-old mattress tolerable, so if it is ruined by my devil dog, then we are both shit out of luck.  Neither of us like sleeping on the couch.  Particularly me, because when I do, Hamlet sleeps directly on my freaking rib cage.  Homeboy doesn't have any appreciation of personal space.

So, last week I ordered a variety of dog urine specific cleaning products, all by a brand called Nature's Miracle.  About a week prior to his first insane display of disrespect for our place of rest, Hamlet had taken his frustrations of being left alone for a little while (not longer than a work day, I swear!) while my roommate, myself, and two out of town guests spent the day at the casino, out on the most expensive thing up in this place.  The prior night, the five of us (Hamlet included) hung out doing nails and gossiping, and I think Ham felt left out with the party left the house.  I've tried to explain to him that it's not my fault that most establishments don't allow his kind to enter, but I feel like he's disappointed in my refusal to stand up for his civil rights.  Okay, to get to the point - he apparently spent the entire time we were out peeing on the rug in our living room.  This rug is 100% New Zealand Wool.  And it belongs to my roommate. 

I have no idea what to do about this.  I mean, you're not even supposed to get wool wet;  how in the F can I clean this up?  If you know me IRL, you probably know that I'm not much into cleaning.  Anything I've owned before that was made of a not-easily-laundered material was probably in the garbage following any instance of soiling.  I'm not a scientist, and also - I don't scrub things.  Before you think I sound like a spoiled brat or something, I would like to point out how soft my hands are.  We all make choices and sacrifices, people.  I'm into my skin.  Maybe next week I will write a review of my Clarisonic, in which I may detail my plan to never look a day over 40.  Obviously, this doesn't mean much now, since I'm just so young and fresh and barely legal and 40 is a full light year away, but mark my words, people:  NEVER. 

ANYWAYS -
After the rug incident, I had to do some research on how to clean urine out of wool.  Nature's Miracle is what the world wide web most highly recommends.  Lucky for me, between the time I found out what I needed to buy and the time the materials arrived from petco.com, my dog developed this whole new bed-peeing hobby.  Yay!

I ordered several different types of Nature's Miracle cleaning products, but the one I used most this weekend was the Urine Destroyer.  Obviously, my bed had to take precedence over the rug, because whichever was cleaned first was where I was sleeping.  So, I stripped it down and threw everything in the wash, and then basically dumped a whole lot of this stuff on my mattress pad.

Points of interest:  It wasn't easy to tell how well I had the spot saturated, but I think that was due to the material being memory foam, and no fault of this solution.  Likewise, it took forever to dry, but probably not anymore time than it would have taken if I would have dumped water on it.  This stuff smells really good - not like a strong cleaner or detergent at all.  The urine smell disappeared pretty much immediately, which is excellent.  After drying, my room smelled fresh - this stuff kind of reminds me of Febreze for that reason.

I'm pretty happy with the way this stuff cleaned the urine out of my mattress pad.  Nature's Miracle Urine Destroyer gets an high mark from Miss Alanny.  However, another product purchased, Nature's Miracle No More Marking, is apparently a huge FAIL.

The directions for use of No More Marking state to spray on areas that have been marked, after treating said areas with one of the removal products.  So, in this scenario, I treated the marked area, my mattress pad, with the Urine Destroyer, and then after everything was fly and dry, I sprayed the mattress pad down with this No More Marking stuff.  Well....

Hamlet peed on the mattress pad again before I even had the sheets back on it.  Granted, he might have been aiming for the pillow, because that's where most of the pp went (yes, the pillow that I just bleached and that took 2 1/2 turns in the dryer to get dry), but still - the pillow was laying on top of the mattress pad, and if this stuff was truly armor against my little troll's wicked ways, then this would not have happened. 

So, to summarize:

Nature's Magic Urine Destroyer:  A
Nature's Magic No More Marking:  F