Kitchen Garden Forum

My son bought his own home. When he visits us he says the house smells like a damp dog. I want to make a natural air freshener with herbs as I love our springer spaniel. Which herbs can anyone recommend please ?

I would recommend a combination of lavender and rosemary. Both can be bought quite cheaply as bushes from most garden centres.

You can strip the leaves to make a pot-pourri, or simply take sprigs and bundle them up and decorate the house with them.

It's even possible to make an infusion of lavender to use as a room spray, though I haven't tried it myself!

(I also use a mild tea-tree shampoo on the dog which helps a lot too! )

With the greatest respect, masking the obnoxious odour with another more pleasing temporary odour does not deal with the source.

Odours are created by bacteria.

The bacteria may well have come from the natural body oils transferred from the dog's fur to furnishings within the home. The older the dog the more pungent the odour can become.

Other causes may be that the family pet has had a 'little accident' at some point.

I suggest that any odour in a carpet may respond to professional cleaning....

see www.ncca.co.uk

If your springer is anything like my GSP then she goes through every muddy puddle and thicket she can find?

As well as a bath if she comes back from walking really dirty or after going in pond/river, we have found that regular doggy baths (monthly minimum) and laundering the dogs bed at the same time help.

She has a plastic "box" bed with an insert mattress, this is washed whenever she is. Dog is towelled dry and smothered in an old towelling dressing gown until almost completely dry.
Mattress number two then comes out of the top of the airing cupboard for dampish dog to use and mattress one, after drying, goes in.

Hi Happymouse
If your dog likes to lie in particular places around the house like mine does ( his favourites are the bottom of the stairs and along the front of the sofa)then these area hold doggy smells. To get rid of the smell, without chemicals, sprinle bicarbonate ofsoda onto the smelly areas and leave it for a few hours. The bicarbonate of soda absorbs the smells and can then be hoovered up.
Hope this helps
Seedling

My dogs odours are generally created by the fox crap that she rolls in.

Oh yes, Fox crap is horrible, our two Newfies occassionally find some and roll in it, once or twice a year only.

When they are wet they smell 'Wet Dog' smell, we do of course towel them down, and it does linger a bit, still I can count myself lucky I suppose in that my sense of smell has never been that good and it doesn't bother me.

You might like to consider a Goodsphere bubble air purifier and conditioner. I bought one recently and although I am sceptical about gimmicks this one really works, it has cleaned the air and you do notice the difference. Do a websearch for the details. It so happens that Ideal World are featuring it today with a special offer The machine basically uses tap water but you might like to try adding the supplied oils as little or as much as you wish. 2 or 3 drops seems to be enough for us.
www.idealworld.tv
Later:-
I have watched the programme and they specifically mentioned removal of dog odours. The special price ended at 9pm but you can still buy one from elsewhere at a similar price if you search around on the 'net
The address where I bought the first one was www.allcures.com.£40 and no postal charge is hard to beat.
I have ordered a second one as above.

I've just bought some little plastic lavender scented disks to hang in wardrobes to repel moths. They work for about 8 weeks apparently and are so much more pleasant smelling than those horrible old "moth ball" vesions which used to be available. When I open our wardrobes now, a wonderful lavender fragrance drifts out and I wonder whether some of these dotted around your house would remove the "doggy" smell.

Thank you all for your kind suggestions. I am going to try all of your ideas

happymouse
dont make it smell too nice or your son may wish to move back