Hi, I have 7 dogs and not the biggest of houses, so i have found when all the dogs have been indoors that my home smells very doggy. I hate a smelly house so have tried a multiple of things, Glade circul'air, airwicks mobil'airs, plug ins, and found that not many of these kills the smell. Can anyone reccomend anything to help my home smell a little less dog? lol

I really dont think you can cover up doggy smells.... it sometimes can make it worse with the scent smell +dogs smell .....with so many dogs probably no carpets and wooden floor and open windows would  possibly help ;)also clean thier feet  more often (i haveto with beardies anyway)not too many full baths as that can add to it with the wet dog smell!!

HTH ~Roni

I think I prefer the smell of dogs to the smell of houses awaft with all the, supposedly, pleasant chemicals from these products :)  In my experience the best way of combating this is reduce soft furnishings wherever the dogs are housed (and reduce dogs when soft funishings are housed :)) ie wooden floors, leather furniture etc, damp dust daily and open the window at least once a day and don't allow the dogs upstairs.

wooden floors definatly work, but you do have to be very carefull if you have big dogs, because when you get a knock at the door and all the dogs try to get up and bomb to the door at hundred mile per hour, they can slip and get hurt.
my friends rottie has just done it and dislocated his hip ooooouuucccchhhhh

I think you might be meaning laminate, Claudia, real wood, even varnished, tends to have quite a bit of texture and I find my dogs grip as well as carpet.  Another possible flooring for solid floors is slate tiles particularly the more rustic type and ceramic tiles with a rough finish or vynl tiles or flooring on a suspended floor.  All lovely and washable :)  I do use rugs in some areas to provide a little softness, either good quality, dense wool which seems to repel a lot of debris in the lounge or very cheap, virtually disposable, market type rugs in the kitchen diner than can be just chucked at the first sign of a whiff.

and if you have soft furnishings (carpets,sofa's they may sit on )..... sprinkle with bicarb of soda leave awhile then vacumn up. its a natural deodoriser that absorbs the doggy smell.
works for me :)

Tried burning incense sticks?
from an aging hippie :) lol
Debs

Gotta be either Nittraj or Sai Baba Nag Champa. They're the only incense sticks I've ever bought that acutally smell nicer than wet dog does - he-he!

We had a thread like this not long back and somebody had a nice recipe for air freshner.

I quite like the Airwick (I think) Pet plug in....

We have mostly laminate and I can honestly say the only room that smells doggy is the the kitchen that has flotex carpet which was inherited from previous owners and due to go.   The problem with laminate as someone has already said is that the dog does do 'wheel spins' when someone rings the door bell. 

We mainly get doggie smell when they come in, especially if they are wet and we have shut them in one room. We use a deororiser from out local pet store it comes in either pink or cream and u dilute it into a spray bottle or can use it to wash floors etc in its really good. My mum tried burning smelly sticks to me they smelt worse than the dogs.

I've just bought a big bottle of Odor-kill as I love the smell and had been told it works really well on bad smells. I'm impressed so far, I put a little bit in a spray bottle, filled it with water and sprayed it all over the house and in my car and a week later my car doesn't smell and neither does my room(where my 5 rats live!) or the gravel out back where the dogs wee :D

Its expensive but only needs to be used sparingly and I've sprayed it on curtains, crpet, tiles, wood etc and its done no harm

HTH :)

I agree with the previous posters , you will need to get rid of most of your soft furnishings to eliminate the doggy smells. carpets are the worst culprits. we have not had carpet in ANY room for over 15 years and have always laid ceramic tiles throughout the ground floor and stripped floorboard upstairs -this combines with leather sofa's almost totally gets rid of any lingering dog smells. A quick wash down with disinfectant keeps the place clean and selling fresh.

Yvonne

Hiya

Thanks for all the idea's, unfortunately i have to have carpet in my house as one of my dogs has a nervous system problem with her back end and needs the grip of the carpet to aid her walking :-(

Ive just been and bought a portable "oust" fan lol to see if that eases it off, my hubby says i am paranoid and that it doesnt smell when you enter the room, but i would rather not take the chance lol.

Having a steam cleaner, certainly makes the air smell much cleaner!!  No chemicals and clears away mud and dirt so easily :d

another small tip is that we use those drop in scent thingys in the hoover as we found the house was far more doggy when the hoover had kicked out its warm air. They are really cheap and come in a variety of fragrances, combined with the other ideas this should help. I also spray the carpet with pet disinfectant that you buy in any pet stores, these also come in lots of smells and are antibacterial and safe to use.

>>another small tip is that we use those drop in scent thingys in the hoover

or just a few drops of essential oil on the spongy/foam air filters works aswell :)

See this thread for some more ideas
http://www.champdogsforum.co.uk/cgi-bin/board/topic_show.pl?pid=576560;hlm=and;hl=carpet%20smells#576560