Gida would be horrified to know I told you all this (good thing her computer hasn’t arrived yet), but she pees on one of our area sometimes. Gida, an older Boston terrier, is confined to this one room (“Gida’s room”) when we’re away. Interestingly, it is the lightest-color rug of any size — including our bedroom carpet — in the apartment.

So, about the rug.

In addition to Gida stains (mostly of the urine variety), it bears the scars of, well, a five-year-old area rug. Footprints, tufts of Gida fur, tufts of us, probably, what appeared to be a candle-soot tumble during a party, and unidentified WTF. I know, we’re disgusting.

I resolved to test these new Shout Pets cleaning products on said stains, especially helpful as Gida has become worse at holding it. And? They worked. They did what they were supposed to do, and now Gida’s room smells like spring-cleaning day. The rug, though not depicted in the clearest, highest-detail shot, is pictured in its clean state above. I was so into this, I even neglected to take a comparison before shot, oops.

This Shout cleaning line was developed for pet stains specifically, for carpet, fabric, and hard floors alike. The line includes Super Absorbent Oxy Pick-Up Pads, meant to soak urine out of a variety of surfaces, a Stain and Odor Remover for fabrics and carpet, and a stain-lifting foam similar in practice to the Stain and Odor Remover. The latter two are the spray-on/leave-in/vacuum-off variety.

Super Absorbent Oxy Pickup Pads, $14.99

These are basically small pee pads for use after the fact instead of before. They worked well on the hardwood. You lay them down and, unlike paper towels, the wet stuff doesn’t soak through onto your hands. I like these, but it’s really not a huge deal for me to use paper towels. Especially since these are made of more material than your standard paper towel.

Pro-Strength Stain and Odor Remover, $10.99

As mentioned, this totally worked. But there are a couple important asterisks to that statement. I get a little intense with cleaning products. That is, I use tons of it in one go. I sprayed the rug repeatedly in all its dirty spots. Then I did it again and again. I let the rug be for a little bit — it predictably took a while for the product to settle into the rug thanks to my zeal — then I proceeded to vacuum it off with a brush attachment. I really put elbow grease into it. Over and over again.

Though not everything came off after a couple days and a step back — a number of these were old stains — it really feels like a new rug. Perhaps they’ll work even better on a newer, cleaner rug.

I could very well have to buy a new batch sooner than most people, but there you go. I seriously considered getting the rug professionally cleaned, since grocery-store rug shampooers never worked well for me. The rug isn’t spotless, but I think this bought us some time.

A related downside was the amount of mess vs. amount of spray needed to clean a fabric couch. I had to use a lot of it repeatedly (on a newish, not-previously-peed-on-ever couch) on a fairly small accident until the odor went away. To be fair, urine is a crazy strong smell.

The products are available at PetSmart.