A Spot of Trouble

My kids used to like the Spot books, about a young, aptly named dog full of surprises. In one, Spot goes through a neighborhood and gets into mischief. When his mother asks what he’s been up to, he says, “Nothing.” You can’t help but hope he gets away with it.

Which was how my new neighbors and I felt about a dog my daughters and I rescued from the humane society and brought to our new home in San Juan Capistrano. A home so new to us, in fact, that the dog arrived ahead of the movers, and just 12 hours after the carpet installers. The following day our dearly adopted adult French sheep dog chose the middle of the living room to test our commitment. The carpet wasn’t the only casualty. My husband has many fine qualities, but loving animals isn’t one.

Dan grew up in an animal-impoverished environment. Five kids, his mother said, were enough. I grew up in suburbia’s version of wild kingdom. Between my brother and me, we had chipmunks, tarantulas, parakeets, guinea pigs, turtles, hamsters, ducklings and, always, at least one dog.

Some came with pedigrees, some from the pound. They came on vacations. They slept on our beds. They barked at our parents when they scolded us. They held vigil if one of us was sick. Brought sneakers from the closet if the word “walk” was mentioned. And never failed to be ecstatic to see us.

My husband doesn’t share these warm, fuzzy memories because of the deficit in his upbringing. That’s why, when we got engaged eight years ago, I made him promise we could always have a dog. This was part of an oft-cited conversation that took place on the eve of our engagement that included his agreeing that I would keep my last name, that we would have joint checking accounts, that I would have the majority vote on the number and timing of kids, and that he would agree (this may now apply) to go to marriage counseling should we ever need it.

But first on my list was a dog. (This was our prenuptial agreement. Had it involved money, we would have had to assign debt.)

We did have one dog early in our marriage, but after she bit our first child, we handed the pet off to gracious grandparents, and I dropped the subject for a while. We agreed, well, rather one-sidedly, to try again after we moved.

Our choice was the only one at the humane society not barking. Rather, he looked soulfully, like a misunderstood poet, out of his 4-by-9-foot cage. A 60-pound heart wrapped in fur.

We took him for a test drive, my girls and I. He let my 4-year-old tie a bow on his neck, gingerly took Goldfish snacks from my 2-year-old’s fingers, and, when I asked the girls whether we should take him, he put his paw on my knee. We were in love.

Good thing, because the first morning in our new home, I walked down the staircase overlooking the living room and saw to my horror two piles of dog excrement, each the size of a paper plate, soaking into the new living room carpet. It seemed that Bogie’s days were once again numbered.

I looked at his big brown eyes under all that shaggy gray fur and realized that this was just a big misunderstanding. (If you’d just been rescued from an untimely death, come to live with strangers on their moving day and had a complete change of diet, you’d have GI trouble, too.)

I glanced upstairs to see my husband knotting his tie and did what any person who wanted to save both an animal and a marriage would do. I grabbed a large steel bowl and spoon, scooped what I could, threw open the windows, carefully placed a large area rug over the offending patches and arranged a smile on my face just as my husband came downstairs. Then I packed him off to work, while my heart beat out the rhythm to “Flight of the Bumble Bee.”

I spent the next hour making desperate calls. First, I called the fix-it guy for our development. He called the carpet installers who said to call (800) 4DUPONT, the Stainmaster crisis line, which quite handily gives remedies to remove just about any stain you can imagine. . . and some you can’t.

They gave me a recipe--basically clean up, wash, rinse, blot--that I repeated three times.

The neighbors got wind of the crisis and kept stopping by to check my progress and offer remedies. The stains were still bad and actually spreading.

They’d warned me at DuPont that acid from a dog’s intestines can permanently bleach carpet. The fix-it man, a dog lover who’d come to know my husband’s temperament when things go wrong, came with his heavy-duty shop vacuum. Then he brought his superintendent, who quickly got the picture and called the president of Tiffany Brothers of Westminster, the development’s carpet cleaning service. An urgent page went out and Tiffany’s was soon on scene.

Then, a miracle. In an instant, one chemical compound and one heavy-duty suction device saved a carpet, a dog, a marriage.

In my favor, according to owner Richard Tiffany, were these factors: Newer carpet cleans better, and so do fresh stains.

We installed huge fans around the room, and by the time Dan returned home, the only signs of disaster were that the floor looked overly vacuumed and I unusually guilty.

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)

When a carpet crisis hits, toll-free menu help is available 24 hours at (800) 4DUPONT.

For general spills, here’s what experts at DuPont Stainmaster and Tiffany Brothers recommend:

1. Act quickly.

2. Scrape up solid material with spoon.

3. Blot moisture with clean towel. Never rub a stain; rubbing can ruin carpet texture. Always use clean, dry white paper or cloth towels.

4. Wash area using a mild soap solution (1/4-teaspoon laundry detergent--not dish detergent--to 1 quart of water). Cover stain with solution, let set five minutes, then blot firmly. Carpet stain removers--such as Resolve and Shout Carpet--work too.

Don’t over-soap. Soap residue in carpets gets tacky and attracts dirt. Rinse well.

5. Rinse with warm water. Blot thoroughly until all the detergent is removed. Use a wet-dry vacuum if you have one.

6. Deodorize, if an odor remains, by applying a mixture of 2 tablespoons white distilled vinegar and 1 quart water, then blot.

7. Dry completely by putting a clean, dry towel over the area and weighting it with a heavy object for several hours.

8. Vacuum.

9. Repeat the process or call the pros (quickly) if all else fails. They have an armament of chemicals, plus high-powered vacuums that are sometimes necessary. A typical minimum charge is $60.