Will my dog/cat damage my hardwood floors?
We all love our furry friends. They are part of the family. Depending on their size and energy level of your pet, they can negatively affect your wood floors. Most often, we hear that they are creating some scratching with their nails. Sometimes, they can have incontinence or vomiting issues as well. Both can do a lot of damage to your wood floors. So, let’s get educated.
Prevention Scratching: We strongly recommend having your cat’s/dog’s nails trimmed often. We have found that depending on the orientation of their paws/nails, some animals scratch floors more than others. We have also found that most of these issues arise more with hyper or very active animals. If the dogs are running through the house a lot, we tend to see much more damage. We also find that animals more than 30-40lbs have a greater tendency to scratch/dent the wood flooring. Some clients have found that there are special socks/shoes for their pets and this helps reduce the scratching significantly. These aren’t for everyone though; you’ll know right away if they will tolerate these! You CAN have wood floors with your pets, you just have to be a bit more conscious and pro-active of any potential damage that they can cause.
Prevention Incontinence: Whether it’s excitement, a random accident, or old age, sometimes you will have urine or vomiting accidents on your wood floors. The most important thing here is to wipe them up immediately. The longer it sits, the more damage it does. First you may see slight blushing, then gray marks, then eventually black staining, most of the time, these will NOT sand out (once black) and you will need to remove and replace the floorboards or stain the floor a very dark brown/black tone to hide the discoloration. If this is a common occurrence, we recommend placing piddle pads, strategically throughout the favorite marking areas to absorb the liquids.
You can have pets AND wood floors, you just have to be proactive in addressing any potential issues and keep up the maintenance on those nails!
