What is the Best Pet Odor Neutralizer?

February 04, 2021

Ever been walking through your home, sitting on your couch, or perhaps even crawling into bed when an unpleasant, all-too-familiar pet odor meets your nose? Your first question is likely, “Where is it coming from?” and a close second is probably, “How do I get rid of it?”

In today’s market, there’s no shortage of “miracle” products and treatments that claim to neutralize pet odors of all types. It can be overwhelming to say the least. How can you possibly know what pet odor neutralizer is best? Luckily, there are some “best characteristics” pet parents can look for in a pet odor neutralizer. 

At Unique Pet Care, we believe that two basic, underlying concerns should form the bedrock of your decision process when choosing a pet odor neutralizing product: 1) safety and 2) effectiveness. However few and far between they may be, there are some products that are unquestionably dangerous for you and your pet! These are often caustic chemical products using harmful ingredients, but there can also be others that are harder to spot. Alongside safety, we all like it when a product is effective. Unfortunately, some products, while they may be relatively safe, are far from effective. They claim to quote-on-quote remove pet odors, but in reality, they often simply mask smells and never address the real underlying cause. (More on that below!)

Long story short, safety and effectiveness should be your two main concerns when choosing a pet odor neutralizing product. In today’s article, we’ll explore this topic and give our recommendations for the best pet odor neutralizer

Safety 

As pet parents, we all understand the need for healthy, safe products, preferably those that come directly from nature. At Unique Pet Care, we view the safety of a product as one of its most important characteristics.

There are many products on the market that are safe for pets. In fact, with the advent of our more health-consciousness culture, plenty of pet products boast complete safety for you, your kids, and your pets.

With that said, keep your eyes open. Some odor neutralizing products, including some forms of potpourri, have cationic detergents (also referred to as quaternary ammonium compounds) as key ingredients. These are downright dangerous to pets if ingested. While cats may walk through these compounds and then groom themselves, dogs might eat these dangerous cationic detergents right on the spot. Either way, these chemicals can cause sores and burns in your pet’s digestive system, leading to vomiting, drooling, and a high fever, among other symptoms, which you can learn about in this article. Be on the lookout for additives like cationic detergents and other chemicals on your pet odor neutralizer’s ingredients list. Oftentimes, products won’t necessarily be upfront about whether or not a dangerous chemical has slipped into the mix!

Beyond overtly dangerous chemicals, you should also be on the lookout for certain perfumes that can cause injury to your pet with prolonged exposure as well as certain essential oils, which can be harmful to pets. 

Plug-in odor neutralizers are one good example of products that contain perfumes poisonous to your pet. Artificial perfumes are frequently made of petrochemicals originating from crude oil. Others use fragrances similar to pesticides.

In addition to harmful perfumes, some types of essential oils can be toxic to pets, especially cats, while having no adverse effects on humans. Because they are airborne, these essential oils will often agitate your cat’s respiratory system, even leading to pneumonia in some cases—as this article relates. Essential oils that are harmful to cats include: wintergreen, sweet birch, citrus, pine, ylang ylang, peppermint, cinnamon, pennyroyal, clove, eucalyptus, tea tree, thyme, oregano, and lavender. Similarly, in addition to those oils already mentioned, dogs can be harmed by these essential oils: anise, juniper, yarrow, and garlic.

Effectiveness

The second key characteristic to look for in a pet neutralizing product is its effectiveness. In other words, how well does it do its job: neutralizing pet odors? This can be a complicated topic, so please see below for our detailed breakdown of why some safe products are more or less effective than others. 

Choosing the Best Product

So, in the end, you want to choose a product that combines both safety and effectiveness. Thankfully, there’s no reason to sacrifice one for the other. 

You see, while many people find that popular products work well, we’d like to suggest an even better option. Now don’t get us wrong: some safe products on the market are also fairly effective. But with that said, other safe products can be less-than-stellar on the effectiveness side. 

For example, many safe products use only enzymes to break down stains and odors. Enzymes, unlike bacteria, are not living organisms, meaning that no matter how well they work, they’ll NEVER fully digest a stain or odor. Enzymes can break the molecules that make up stains and odors down into smaller pieces, but without bacteria to eat those molecules, they won’t fully disappear. Other safe products use bacteria + enzymes, but often they use the wrong type of bacteria (anaerobic, which produce odors, vs aerobic, which are odorless), or they use weak strains of bacteria. Still other safe products are actively anti-microbial, meaning that they kill bacteria. While this may remove some odors, it is nowhere as effective as odorless aerobic bacteria (more on these hard workers below!), which work by completely digesting stains and odors until nothing is left but water and carbon dioxide. 

In many cases, we regret to say, products like those listed above will mask the pet odor with strong fragrances rather than actually removing its source. This is, of course, only a partial solution. The last thing you want is for odors to come back!

Unique Pet Odor and Stain Eliminator, however, is different. It uses BOTH the best strains of aerobic bacteria + enzymes, working together in tandem, to both break stains and odors down into smaller pieces using enzymes and completely digest them using bacteria. The best part is that, as the bacteria work, they produce more enzymes to keep breaking down the molecules making up the stain or creating the odor. Ultimately, like we said above, this process leaves behind nothing but water and carbon dioxide, which means that the odor or stain is eliminated at its source! No masking. No scary chemicals. Pet Odor and Stain Eliminator is even thorough enough to remove pet pheromones, which discourages pets from resoiling an area you already cleaned!

Yes, we know we’re biased, but can you blame us? Pet Odor and Stain Eliminator combines complete safety with phenomenal effectiveness, helping you achieve an odor-and-stain-free home that’s a haven for you and your pets. 

To learn more about why Pet Odor and Eliminator (plus all our other products) works so well, we encourage you to check out our article, Which is Better: Enzymes or Bacteria? This article breaks down in more depth why bacteria and enzymes work so well when used together!

Conclusion

Pets are a blessing no doubt, but they can sometimes be smelly ones! Thankfully, there’s no reason to deal with nasty odors when such a great solution is available. Plus, pet parents have even less reason to sacrifice safety for effectiveness or effectiveness for safety. 

With that said, as we’ve shown in this article, some products work better than others. When all is said and done, it’s best to do your own research and make up your mind for yourself. Regardless of what you choose to do, we hope that this article has helped you understand pet odor neutralizing products plus which one is best for you! If you should have any additional questions about pet odor neutralizers or any of the other topics we’ve written about in our blogs, please let us know! We can be reached at support@uniquemm.com! 

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