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Spring Cleaning: How to Clean Dog Beds

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We’ve been covering that annual rite of spring lately with posts on cleaning your living room and bedroom in a pet-friendly way. Now it’s time to turn our attention to cleaning pet products themselves–specifically your pet beds.

Dog beds (and cat beds) come in all types of sizes and styles, depending on your budget, your pet’s needs, and the space available in your home. We have a wide variety of beds in our home, from snuggly self-warming beds to plush memory foam beds like these available on www.Amazon.com.

Regardless of the type of bed your dog enjoys, it’s important to give it a good cleaning (and not just in the spring) for several reasons:

  • to naturally reduce fleas and flea eggs. Washing the bedding is a chemical-free way to get rid of fleas. Wash the bed covers in hot water (turn off the cycle and allow the cover to soak in the water if you have seen a flea infestation). A cup of vinegar in the rinse water is also an excellent natural way to discourage fleas.
  • to reduce risk of marking or spraying. If you have other cats and dogs in the house, keeping your pet bedding clean and odor-free will reduce the risk of urine marking.
  • to reduce pet odor. Don’t let that just-shampooed dog return to a dirty bed!
  • to keep the bedding looking fresh. Besides the benefits to your dog, it’s also nice to make sure our homes stay looking nice as well! Keep the bedding clean to prevent dirt from being ground-in. The longer pet stains remain on the fabric, the more difficult they are to remove.

We wash our pet bedding in pet-safe detergent; we skip fabric softeners and scented products. (If we can smell that fragrance, just think how overpowering that scent has to be to our dogs!)

Once the bedding has been washed, we like to air-dry the pet bed covers. Sunshine is a natural germ killer!

When cleaning memory foam beds and other inserts that aren’t washed in the machine, we take them outside, give them a good shake, and let them sit in sunshine for a good airing.

Not only is it a healthy way to kill germs in your pet’s bed, it also brings back that great ozone scent of just-washed laundry, a sure tip that your house has been enjoying some spring cleaning!

This is a sponsored post.

Paris Permenter
This post originally appeared on DogTipper.com and is the sole property of DogTipper.com.