Dog Tracks and Other Muddy Tales

Enlarge Image Image Gallery Last winter’s weather was wacky enough that we had at least a half-dozen freeze-snow-thaw cycles and mud seasons to go with them. I don’t mind dealing with the sticky gumbo once or twice in a fairly narrow time frame, but with anywhere from three to five dogs in the household, it was quite a chore to clean their dirty feet each time they wanted inside. iStockPhoto.com/greggdunnett

Last winter’s weather was wacky enough that we had at least a half-dozen freeze-snow-thaw cycles and mud seasons to go with them. I don’t mind dealing with the sticky gumbo once or twice in a fairly narrow time frame, but with anywhere from three to five dogs in the household, it was quite a chore to clean their dirty feet each time they wanted inside.

Our first approach was an attempt to preempt the mess in most of the house. We put wood chips down on favorite dog trails leading to the back door. We layered the mudroom floor with old towels and newspaper, converting the space into a passive decontamination chamber. We thought that if our canine companions spent 10 or 15 minutes there on the way inside, the temporary flooring would absorb the worst of the mess. Some days it worked well, other days not so well. Most days, I found a few more inches of lace missing from the assorted footwear in the mudroom boot rack.

It’s hard to know whether any of the effort really helped because muddy dog prints showed up all over the house no matter what we tried. And Gus, our 50-something-pound border collie spent more than one afternoon sleeping on the sofa (clean feet and all) only to leave a nice brown shadow on the upholstery.

This is when we knew we needed to develop an offensive strategy … with the mud anyway.

Stage one of our battle included having a mop and plenty of Mister Clean handy to keep the mudroom and kitchen floors looking decent. There’s nothing as satisfying as a freshly mopped floor … that is until dry-footed country dogs traipse across it before it’s dry. It seems that in our part of the world, dry-footed dogs aren’t necessarily clean-footed dogs. You guessed it … the still-moist Mister Clean mixed with the dry dirt on their feet, leaving a trail so clear it was easy to follow right onto the living room carpet.

Since we were smart enough to invest in stain-release carpeting when we replaced it last year, at first we just let the paw-prints dry and went to work on them with our Dyson DC 17 Absolute Animal (about $549.99 at www.Dyson.com) vacuum cleaner. The Animal worked pretty well … especially for footprints made with relatively dry dirt. We originally bought the device to keep our pet-filled house hair free … it works great on the thousands of Asian ladybeetles that invade each winter, too. As a vacuum, the Dyson is nothing short of phenomenal. It uses no disposable bags, is virtually impossible to clog and will pull the curtains from the rods if you aren’t careful. However, the Dyson was not designed to remove dirt that is really ground into the carpet … especially when it’s applied in the form of wet mud.