Carolina clay and your dog's paws (Welcome: house, buy, garage)

[ADVentive]

With the drought, we have no grass in the back yard. We have a lot of this red Carolina clay. Now, with the rain, we have muddy clay. We let the dogs out to potty, and they come back with their feet covered in the stuff! We try wiping it with a towel at the door, but it doesn't do a good enough job, and they end up tracking it in the house. Now I can't get it out of the carpet!

So, how do you get it off your dog's paws? And how do you get it out of your carpet? I really don't want to run them to the bathtub after every time they have to potty.

[mdp_az]

A few times, I have had to put my dog in the garage until she dried so that I could then flake off the clay and then wash her paws. It is awful. Best way to get it out of carpet is steam cleaning.

[rfb]

Buy some Folex - it is great at getting rid of the red clay stains on carpets, and works much better than anything else I've tried (and I've tried lots!).

[tee-tee]

We use some moist wipes/towlettes to clean our dog's paws when we let him in - forget the brand but the Mrs. found it at a pet store. Works well.

We have hardwoods.

[VickiR]

Welcome to the land of red clay!

My friends from other states used to wonder why I had the kids take their shoes off in the garage and not wear them in the house and on the beige carpet!

We also used the wipees before we replaced the carpet with hardwood. Now we just wipe the dog's paws off at the door. She sits and waits for someone to do it since we've been doing it for years! Smart dog. She's a sheltie. The kids STILL have to be reminded sometimes!

Vicki

[leighbhe]

The best way we have found, is using the spray nozzle on the hose..........but since you cannot do that now we also put a square bucket and our dog knew to stop at the bucket and he would hold up a paw at a time and we would rinse them in the bucket, then rub them with a towel. the spray nozzle worked the best for us, because we had a big dog (great dane) with HUGE feet, so that clay was every place!

Leigh

[webwolf07]

One thing that I have found that helps a lot is to trim the hair between their paw pads. If you have a fluffy dog, odds are their feet are like little sponges. I do that with mine and it works great.

[mistydew]

I have seen a gadget in catalogs that you dip your dog's paws into for a "paw bath"...not sure how they work since I've never used it. My black lab came home looking like a chocolate lab after a couple of days at the pet resort this weekend. I've never seen her that filthy, but she looked like she had fun!
Judy