What should a homeowner do with a pet stain on upholstery?

Don't try to fix it yourself. Take paper or terry cloth towels and blot the area; don't rub it and don't put anything on it while it's wet. Then call an upholstery cleaning professional.

The store-bought cleaning products some homeowners use are Band-Aids that can actually upset the problem and make a little spot huge, four or five times as big as it was. Then you've got a whole mess under the carpet itself.

After blotting it, lay a heavy towel on the area and let it dry. A lot will evaporate and absorb upward as it dries into the towel before the cleaners get there.

In the case of pet urine, we use a decontamination system that pre-treats it to loosen the urine salts, shampooing it as many times as we need to, rinsing it and post-treating it to kill any remaining bacteria and eliminating the odor.

With urine, if you can smell it, you're breathing in waste matter that you can't see. And that's extremely unhealthy and can be a big problem for sensitive people with allergies, or anyone for that matter. My job is to kill the bacteria so they don't have any further issues.

If the pet messes are an ongoing issue, the owner should keep the animal off [the upholstery] and not allow them free roam of the house. Sometimes we'll come to a job and staining is all over the place and the smell is just overwhelming. In that case, we are very honest with them and tell them it'd be cheaper to get a new carpet.

But the best advice I can give people is to call a cleaning professional. I know if I used my pliers, I could pull a tooth out, but it wouldn't be the right way. So I go to a dentist. I'd hire an attorney before I'd try to represent myself in court. Do the necessary research, really investigate it, then call a professional."