Searching for the ideal paw wiper
- Laura Moore: Housebroken
- January 20, 2021
- 693
Occupants and houses love their pets, especially dogs and cats; however, houses and occupants do not love muddy paws.
This time of year, it rains and snows frequently, and mud is the result. Our poor dogs must take care of their business outside. We keep towels at the door to clean dirty paws, but obviously we aren’t doing a great job. Yesterday I decided to clean our poor floors and rugs of their mud deposits.
Talk about an exercise in futility. As soon as I finished that chore, the dogs had to go out again and returned bearing muddy paws. If we could just get them to wear little boots, our house would thank us. However, dogs aren’t amenable to boot wearing. My Taller Half is an excellent paw wiper, but even he can’t get it all. As a result, there are paw prints on all our rugs.
Our house is not happy about our inability to keep her as clean as she likes, and that is worrisome. An unhappy house is sure to cause problems. And sure enough, she developed a leak in her bathroom and required the attention of one of her favorite folks, our plumber. It was a small leak and easily repaired, but such repairs are never cheap.
Surely other houses have the same problems if they have dogs. What would it take to remove this mud problem? Can dogs be trained to stay away from muddy areas? Surely an occupant out there has solved the “mud tracking into the house” problem. Surely with all the technology available, a house can be made mud-free.
A friend had an idea. She suggested covering our lawn with small rocks and our gardens with thick mulch. We were impressed with this solution and eager to look into having it done. It was a brilliant idea until we got cost estimates. Any other ideas?