HELP ME! My house smells!!!!
 

We moved into our new house right around Christmas. We've been here over a month, and I've been trying to re-train Kaji to the new routines of this house. That's just something I always do when we move to make sure I set up Kaji to be successful and earn as many treats and cuddles for peeing and pooping in the right place. Long story short, I just recently added the master bedroom in addition to the master bath to Kaji's roam space. Well... I found evidence of him marking. :eek: I cleaned that up, but instead of the room smelling better, IT SMELLS WORSE!!!:confused::confused::confused:

I've caught Kaji intensely sniffing in random spots around the house. The kind of intense sniffing that usually precedes Kaji lifting his leg on a tree. He hasn't done this kind of intense sniffing indoors since he came home in 2009 and had a marking contest with my then roommate's dog.

I'm wondering, instead of just cleaning his accidents, am I pulling up other smells from the carpet? Lingering previous owner smells?

I know this will sound crazy, but I know how Kaji's pee smells (oh the joys of being a yorkie mom :rolleyes:) The master bedroom smells like pee, but not Kaji's pee. I'm almost 100% convinced of that.

If it isn't Kaji's pee, and he is being enticed to mark because of pre-existing smells, what do I do? How to I stop this from continuing? Kaji doesn't leave my side when I'm home, I usually stop his intense sniffing when I'm here. The problem is when he's home all alone. How do I clean to stop this from happening again?

Are these carpeted areas? I would have a good professional carpet cleaning service come in or rent one of the top of the line carpet cleaning machines. When Teddy was a puppy, I used oxiclean Hoover carpet shampoo to remove vomit bile smells, which I think are the absolute hardest to get out of carpet.

It is carpet. We have it professionally cleaned before moving in. The carpet is new. They changed it before selling. I think whatever I'm smelling I'm brining up from below the new carpet.

It's possible that the smell is in the padding below if that was not replaced with the carpet. Any wallpaper, or do the walls have fresh paint? When we stayed at a pet friendly hotel, I could tell that Max was finding spots in the wallpaper that had likely been marked.

I did find spray marks in rooms that have hardwood floors. I couldn't get the stain out. I have't found anything in that bedroom.

I'll bet you it's soaked down into the subfloor. When we took up our carpet to put in the laminate, we knew where Toto's favorite spots were. The backs of the carpets were soaked, into the padding, and even soaked into the subfloor, which you can't really replace. I mean you can, but it's a PITA. Luckily with the laminate it's much easier to clean up messes, and they are easy to spot, with a matte finish instead of shiny.

ETA: if it's the second floor, the subfloor is wood and very porous. If it's the first floor, most likely is concrete foundation under there without any wood. At least that's what we found when we did our floors. We still found some corners that he got the walls and then dripped down to the floor. So the concrete floor was easier to clean but not the walls. And this was a brand new house, so no previous dog smells.

If it's pretty bad, then yeah - -I agree with Priscilla, it's probably in the subfloors...in which case you'd have to remove carpet and carpet pads, and then seal the concrete with a couple coats of KILZ. And then, yup, new floor. We had to do that compliments of our Wylie when he was about a year old...sigh.